#most of my Them scribbles have been posted either in groups or with other stuff...

[carnivalcarriondiscarded]

If it's not too much trouble could you show us some of your sketches of Barnaby and Wally cuddling/ hugging? The way you draw them injects serotonin directly into my blood stream 🫶🏽 👉🏽👈🏽

Have a nice day/night btw!

im not sure if there's anything leftover that i haven't already posted & isn't too dated for me to handle... but actually hold on lemme look through my scribble pages. there might be something hiding in the back

AHA! mostly au scribbles but here they are!

[soundsfaebutokay]

So I've recc'd this video before, but it deserves its own post because it's one of my favorite things on youtube. It's a Tedx Talk by comics writer, editor, and journalist Jay Edidin, and I really think that it will connect with a lot of people here.

If you live and breathe stories of all kinds, you might like this.

If you care about media representation, you might like this.

If you're neurodivergent, you might like this.

If you're interested in a gender transition story that veers from the norm, you might like this.

If you love the original Leverage and especially Parker, and understand how important it is that a character like her exists, you will definitely like this.

Transcript below the cut:

You Are Here: The Cartography of Stories

by Jay Edidin

I am autistic. And what this means in practice is that there are some things that are easier for me than they are for most people, and a great many things that are somewhat harder, and these affect my life in more or less overt ways. As it goes, I'm pretty lucky. I've been able to build a career around special interests and granular obsession. My main gig at the moment is explaining superhero comics continuity and publishing history for which work I am somehow paid in actual legal currency—which is both a triumph of the frivolous in an era of the frantically pragmatic, and a job that's really singularly suited to my strengths and also to my idiosyncrasies.

I like comics. I like stories in general, because they make sense to me in ways that the rest of the world and my own mind often don't. Self-knowledge is not an intuitive thing for me. What sense of self I have, I've built gradually and laboriously and mostly through long-term pattern recognition. For decades, I didn't even really have a self-image. If you'd asked me to draw myself, I would eventually have given you a pair of glasses and maybe a very messy scribble of hair, and that would've been about it. But what I do know—backwards, forwards, and in pretty much every way that matters—are stories. I know how they work. I understand their language, their complex inner clockwork, and I can use those things to extrapolate a sort of external compass that picks up where my internal one falls short. Stories—their forms, their structure, the sense of order inherent to them—give me the means to navigate what otherwise, at least for me, would be an impassable storm of unparsable data. Or stories are a periscope, angled to access the parts of myself I can't intuitively see. Or stories are a series of mirrors by which I can assemble a composite sketch of an identity I rarely recognize whole...which is how I worked out that I was transgender, in my early thirties, by way of a television show.

This is my story. And it's about narrative cartography, and representation, and why those things matter. It's about autism and it's about gender and it's about how they intersect. And it's about the kinds of people we know how to see, and the kinds of people we don't. It's not the kind of story that gets told a lot, you might hear a lot, because the narrative around gender transition and dysphoria in our culture is really, really prescriptive. It's basically the story of the kid who has known for their whole life that they're this and not that, and that story demands the kind of intuitive self-knowledge that I can't really do, and a kind of relationship to gender that I don't really have—which is part of why it took me so long to figure my own stuff out.

So, to what extent this story, my story has a beginning, it begins early in 2014 when I published an essay titled, "I See Your Value Now: Asperger's and the Art of Allegory." And it explored, among other things, the ways that I use narrative and narrative structures to navigate real life. And it got picked up in a number of fairly prominent places that got linked, and I casually followed the ensuing discussion. And I was surprised to discover that readers were fairly consistently assuming I was a man. Now, that in itself wasn't a new experience for me, even though at the time I was writing under a very unambiguously female byline. It had happened in the letter columns of comics I'd edited. It had happened when a parody Twitter account I'd created went viral. When I was on staff at Wired, I budgeted for fancy scotch by putting a dollar in a box every time a reader responded in a way that made it clear they were assuming I was a man in response to an article where my name was clearly visible, and then I had to stop doing that because it happened so often I couldn't afford to keep it up. But in all of those cases, the context, you know, the reasons were pretty obvious. The fields I'd worked in, the beats I covered, they were places where women had had to fight disproportionally hard for visibility and recognition. We live in a culture that assumes a male default, so given a neutral voice and a character limit, most readers will assume a male author.

But this was different, because this wasn't just a book I'd edited, it wasn't a story I'd reported—it was me, it was my story. And it made me uncomfortable, got under my skin in ways that the other stuff really hadn't. And so I did what I do when that happens, and I tried to sort of reverse-engineer it to look at the conclusions and peel them back to see the narratives behind them and the stories that made them tick. And I started this, I started this by going back to the text of the essay, and you know, examining it every way I could think of: looking at craft, looking at content. And in doing so, I was surprised to realize that while I had written about a number of characters with whom I identified closely, that every single one of those characters I'd written about was male. And that surprised me even more than the responses to the essay had, because I've spent my career writing and talking and thinking about gender and representation in popular media. In 2014, I'd been the feminist gadfly of an editorial department and multiple mastheads. I'd been a founding board member of an organization that existed to advocate for more and better representation of women and girls in comics characters and creators. And most of my favorite characters, the ones I'd actively seek out and follow, were women. Just not, apparently, the characters I saw myself in.

Now I still didn't realize it was me at this point. Remember: self-knowledge, not very intuitive for me. And while I had spent a lot of time thinking about gender, I'd never really bothered to think much about my own. I knew academically that the way other people read and interpreted my gender affected and had influenced a lifetime of social and professional interactions, and that those in turn had informed the person I'd grown up into during that time. But I really believed, like I just sort of had in the back of my head, that if you peeled away all of that social conditioning, you'd basically end up with what I got when I tried to draw a self-portrait. So: a pair of glasses, messy scribble of hair, and in this case, maybe also some very strong opinions about the X-Men. I mean, I knew something was off. I'd always known something was off, that my relationship to gender was messy and uncomfortable, but gender itself struck me as messy and uncomfortable, and it had never been a large enough part of how I defined myself to really feel like something that merited further study, and I had deadlines, and...so it was always on the back burner. So, I looked, I looked at what I had, at this improbable group of exclusively male characters. And I looked and I figured that if this wasn't me, then it had to be a result of the stories I had access to, to choose from, and the entertainment landscape I was looking at. And the funny thing is, I wasn't wrong, exactly. I just wasn't right either.

See, the characters I'd written about had one other significant trait in common aside from their gender, which is that they were all more or less explicitly, more or less heavily coded as autistic. And I thought, "Ah, yes. This explains it. This is under representation in fiction echoing under representation in life and vice versa." Because the characteristics that I'd honed in on, that I particularly identified with in these guys, were things like emotional unavailability and social awkwardness and granular obsession, and all of those are characteristics that are seen as unsympathetic and therefore unmarketable in female characters. Which is also why readers were assuming that I was a man.

Because, you see, here's the thing. I'm not the only one who uses stories to navigate the world. I'm just a little more deliberate about it. For humans, stories formed the bridge between data and understanding. They're where we look when we need to contextualize something new, or to recognize something we're pretty sure we've seen before. They're how we identify ourselves; they're how we locate ourselves and each other in the larger world. There were no fictional women like me; there weren't representations of women like me in media, and so readers were primed not to recognize women like me in real life either.

Now by this point, I had started writing a follow-up essay, and this one was also about autism and narratives, but specifically focused on how they intersected with gender and representation in media. And in context of this essay, I went about looking to see if I could find even one female character who had that cluster of traits I'd been looking for, and I was asking around in autistic communities. And I got a few more or less useful one-off suggestions, and some really, really splendid arguments about semantics and standards, and um...then I got one answer over and over and over in community after community after community. "Leverage," people told me. "You have to watch Leverage."

So I watched Leverage. Leverage is five seasons of ensemble heist drama. It's about a team of very skilled con artists who take down corrupt and powerful plutocrats and the like, and it's a lot of fun, and it's very clever, and it's clever enough that it doesn't really matter that it's pretty formulaic, and I enjoyed it a lot. But what's most important, what Leverage has is Parker.

Parker is a master thief, and she is the best of the best of the best in ways that all of Leverage's characters are the best of the best. And superficially, she looks like the kind of woman you see on TV. So she's young, and she's slender, and she's blonde, and she's attractive but in a sort of approachable way. And all of that familiarity is brilliant misdirection, because the thing is, there are no other women like Parker on TV. Because Parker—even if it's never explicitly stated in the show—Parker is coded incredibly clearly as autistic. Parker is socially awkward. Her speech tends to have limited inflection; what inflection it does have is repetitive and sounds rehearsed a lot of the time. She's not emotionally literate; she struggles with it, and the social skills she develops over the series, she learns by rote, like they're just another grift. When she's not scaling skyscrapers or cartwheeling through laser grids, she wears her body like an ill-fitting suit. Parker moves like me. And Parker, Parker was a revelation—she was a revolution unto herself. In a media landscape where unempathetic women usually exist to either be punished or "loved whole," Parker got to play the crabby savant. And she wasn't emotionally intuitive but it was never ever played as the product of abuse or trauma even though she had survived both of those—it was just part of her, as much as were her hands or her eyes. And she had a genuine character arc. My god, she had a genuine romantic arc, even. And none of that required her to turn into anything other than what she was. And in Parker I recognized a thousand tics and details of my life and my personality...but. I didn't recognize myself.

Why? What difference was there in Parker, you know, between Parker and the other characters I'd written about? Those characters, they'd spanned ethnicities and backgrounds and different media and appearances and the only other characteristic they all had in common was their gender. So that was where I started to look next, and I thought, "Well, okay, maybe, maybe it's masculinity. Maybe if Parker were less feminine, she'd click with me the way those other characters had." So then I tried to imagine a Parker with short hair, who's explicitly butch, and...nothing. So okay, I extended it in what seems like the only logical direction to extend it. I said, "Well, if it's not masculinity, what if it's actual maleness? What if Parker were a man?" Ah. Yeah.

In the end, everything changed, and nothing changed, which is often the way that it goes for me. Add a landmark, no matter how slight, and the map is irrevocably altered. Add a landmark, and paths that were invisible before open wide. Add a landmark, and you may not have moved, but suddenly you know where you are and where you can go.

I wasn't going to tell this story when I started planning this talk. I was gonna tell a similar story, it was about stories, like this is, about narratives and the ways that they influence our culture and vice versa. And it centered around a group of women at NASA who had basically rewritten the narrative around space exploration, and it was a lot more fun, and I still think it was more interesting. But it's also a story you can probably work out for yourselves. In fact it's a story some of you probably have, if you follow that kind of thing, which you probably do given that you're here. And this is a story, my story is not a story that I like to tell. It's not a fun story to talk about because it's very personal and I am a very private person. And it's not universal. And it's not always relatable, and it's definitely not aspirational. And it's not the kind of story that you tend to encounter unless you're already part of it...which is why I'm telling it now. Because the thing is, I'm not the only person who uses stories to parse the world and navigate it. I'm just a little more deliberate. Because I'm tired of having to rely on composite sketches.

Open your maps. Add a landmark. Reroute accordingly.

[just--another--daydreamer]

Bound Souls

» Izuku Midoriya x male reader

» Genre: Angst & Fluff » Requested (by @thatcucumberwhore): Soulmates with Midoriya and male reader? 👉🏼👈🏼😊  » Summary: Soulmate AU where soulmates share the same superpower. You were born quirkless and fall in love with the insanely powerful hero student Midoriya » Warnings: just some angst and crying » Words: 2.6k

You can find a link to my Masterlist etc in my bio and pinned post

***

Soulmate AU where soulmates share the same superpower

“Are you Y/N from the General Education department? Class 1-C?” You closed your locker and turned around. A boy stood in front of you, a bit too close, which he noticed too and took a step back while muttering an apology under his breath. “Yeah, that’s me.” You looked the boy up and down. His tie was not tied properly, his green hair was a mess and he looked way too excited to see you while you had no idea who he was. Judging by the single button on the shoulder part of his uniform he belonged in the hero department.

“And you are…?” “Oh, of course, sorry!” The boy stood up straight before bowing shortly. “I’m Izuku Midoriya from class 1-A! I sent you an email about the tutoring yesterday!” “Ahh yeah I almost forgot about that!” You only vaguely remembered putting up a small ad on the school’s website, saying that you would be willing to help other students with different subjects and topics in school that they did not understand. Especially for students from the hero department it was not uncommon to need tutoring since most of them were way too focused on the practical part of being a hero and neglected basic things like maths or foreign languages.

You opened your backpack and pulled out your calendar. “It was English and maths, right? I’m free this afternoon, so we could meet at the café that’s quite close to the school’s entrance? You know which one I’m talking about?” Midoriya nodded, so you scribbled the time into your calendar. “Alright, I’ll see you after school then!”

***

The warm air in the small café smelled sweet like cake and waffles when you entered. A few students from UA and other schools sat in groups and pairs at the tables with their faces either buried in books or enjoying something to eat while chatting. Midoriya was already there; he sat at a table next to a window, so you approached him.

“Have you been waiting for long?” Midoriya shook his head. The hero student had changed after school, he was now wearing an All Might hoodie. Nerd. You sat down and put your backpack on the empty chair next to you. Even though Midoriya had prepared himself for a longer and more relaxed stay at the café, and thus had ordered a drink as well as a snack, you got straight to the point.

“I’m willing to be your tutor, but according to your email you ranked fourth during your midterms? Why would you need tutoring for that?” You watched Midoriya’s face turn red. “Well, that has multiple reasons,” he started to mumble incoherently. “Don’t want to fall behind… Need to do my best… Then there was the-… and I wasn’t allowed in class…” You could not make much sense of anything but the last part. “You-” you pointed at Midoriya and narrowed your eyes. “-were one of the students fighting at night, weren’t you?” The colour of Midoriya’s face changed from light red to tomato red. “Y-yeah…” he sighed. “I didn’t miss many classes but all that’s on my mind is the practical hero stuff like fighting and I train that instead of studying for the other subjects. So, before the written exams, I always spend my time catching up and studying way too much and I want to change that. I need to work more on that stuff throughout the term, not last-minute.”

“I thought so.” You opened your backpack and pulled out a pencil and a notepad. “That’s a problem many hero students have, so I’m willing to help you with this!” Midoriya started smiling. “That’s great, thank you!” He reached into his own bag and put some books on the table. “Let’s get started then!”

Izuku Midoriya. Now that you were watching him rewrite his English essay for the third time, you remembered where you had seen him before. He had stood out at the sports festival as the kid who had broken all of his bones while using his quirk. Strong and effective but useless at the same time. You wondered if his soulmate had the same problems using their shared quirk. Shaking your head, you dismissed that thought.

Midoriya bit his pencil and furrowed his brows at his paper. “Can I help?” you offered and Midoriya nodded. “Did I use the correct tense here?” He slid his paper over to you and you skimmed his last sentence. “Looks fine to me. But I’d use a different word right here and here.” You drew circles around a few words. “Your English grammar is great, but your vocabulary needs work.”

“Alright, thanks!” Instead of getting back to work, Midoriya took a sip from his mug and looked at you. “You’re a great teacher,” he told you. “Are you considering becoming one?” The question caught you off-guard. You put your pencil down, sat back and thought about the question for a few seconds. “It’s not my first choice,” you admitted, “but that first choice won’t work out, so I’m considering becoming a teacher.” “Then what was your first choice?” “I wanted to become a hero. Like everyone else.”

Midoriya curiously cocked his head to the side. “Why didn’t it work out?” “’cause I’m quirkless,” you answered dryly. It was not something you liked talking about. Quirkless people were looked down upon more and more, and not being able to become a hero was not the only downside. “Oh, I’m sorry.” Your vis-à-vis said and looked down on his paper. “Don’t apologize, it’s not your fault after all.” “But I brought it up and you seem sad about it.” While that was true, you did not want him to feel guilty about it. So, instead of replying, you tapped on his paper with your pencil. “C’mon, fix that sentence!” Your student complied.

Your study session ended after two and a half hours, in which you had forced Midoriya to re-write his essay about four times. Even though you had dragged him through hell, he asked for your number and to meet you again in the future. Once you had stepped outside, Midoriya pulled out his wallet. “So how much for this lesson?” You looked at him, dumbfounded, before you began to laugh. “W-what’s wrong?” Midoriya lowered the hand that was holding the money when you raised your hands to mutely indicate that you did not want his money. “But it’s your time that you could spend in other ways!”

Even though he had a point, you shook your head. “Normally I’d take money, but I had a different idea,” you explained. “I’d like to ask you to teach me a thing or two about self-defence and fighting. It’s always useful, y’know?” “So you help me with my homework, and I help you train?” You nodded and offered Midoriya your hand. “Deal?” Midoriya shook your hand without hesitation. “Deal!” With that, you started walking back to the campus together.

Since it was getting dark, not too many people were out anymore. A few UA students were on their way back to campus as well, but you did not pay much attention to them. The two people who caught your eye were two girls standing in front of a park’s gates. One of them opened her hand and let her palm face upward. For a moment, nothing happened. Then, a flower grew out of the palm of her hand, glowing in a warm, white light that lit up both the girls’ faces. The other girl clapped before doing the exact same. Shared quirks. Soulmates.

You looked down at your own hands.

Besides not being able to become a hero, never finding your soulmate was the other downside of being quirkless. Sure, the number of quirkless people was low in your generation, but there still was not that one person you could find. It was not even proven if quirkless people had a soulmate like people with quirks, who shared one and the same ability with their soulmate. It was not looked down upon to be in a relationship with someone who was not your soulmate, in fact, platonic soulmates were a thing as well as dating someone who was not your soulmate and people embraced that idea. And sometimes you held onto that romantic thought of meeting your soulmate and growing old with them together, either platonically or romantically. But being quirkless made that impossible.

“Why did you stop walking? Are you alright?” Midoriya was a few steps ahead of you already when he stopped and looked back at you. “Y/N?” You tore your eyes away from the girls and forced a smile. “I’m fine, don’t worry!” As the sun finally set, you reached the dorms and said goodbye for the night.

After that, you continued to meet Midoriya for extra tutoring as well as basic fight training, and you started to become friends. Whenever you saw each other on the hallway, he smiled at you sweetly, and you even ate lunch together every now and then because he needed you to read over his homework before class.

The training with Midoriya was exhausting, the hero students had some insane workout routines that you could never dream of completing.

But like every week, there you were again in your PE clothes in the small park surrounding UA. Next to you stood Midoriya, currently telling you about the importance of stretching as you popped your joints with every single movement.

 After a while, Midoriya left you to do some push-ups while he activated his quirk to do some training on his own. He dropped his hoodie to the ground, exposing the many scars on his arms. It was not your first time seeing them, but they fascinated you every single time. Midoriya pushed himself so hard and got hurt so often, yet he never gave up on his dream of becoming a hero. You envied him a little – after all his quirk was insanely powerful. A sigh escaped you as you watched him from your planking position. “Are you done already?” Shit, Midoriya had caught you staring. A faint blush adorned his cheeks as he approached you, the green light from his quirk still surrounding him. “Yeah,” you lied, not having done a single push-up. You moved from your current position into a sitting one and Midoriya sat down as well.

“You didn’t do the push-ups, did you?” “You’re right, that was a lie,” you admitted. “You seem distracted, is there something on your mind?” Midoriya’s question caught you off-guard. “Of course, you don’t have to share, but I’m here to listen, if you’d like.” You nodded with a smile. “Thank you, Midoriya.” Taking a few deep breaths, you closed your eyes for a few seconds. The cool evening air smelled like grass and autumn, a calming scent that let you relax a little.

“One of my friends from class 1-C recently met her soulmate,” you told Deku. “Of course, I’m happy for her, she deserves it, but… but I’m jealous at the same time. People like her and you get to be happy with someone, but what about me? I-” you balled your hands to fists as tears dwelled in your eyes. “I’m just someone quirkless who’s doomed to never find someone, you know?” Before your tears started falling, you quickly wiped them away with your hand.

Midoriya looked at you with his brows furrowed. “You’re jealous of me? Because of the quirk I was born with?” His gaze fell on his hands. “Normally I don’t think about the soulmate thing too much, but- but I’ve fallen in love with someone born with a quirk.” Your breath got caught in your throat as you said it out loud for the first time. It was honestly surprising that you managed to admit that to yourself as well as to somebody else. Deku’s eyes shot up again and met yours.

“Oh,” he mumbled, “I’m sorry.” You let out a shaky sigh before you continued. “Deku, that person is you.” A sob shook your body. “But you have this amazing quirk, so I know that it’s already impossible, no matter what I do or what happens now that I told you.” Shock painted Midoriya’s face almost white. His mouth stood agape as he stared at you, no reaction. It was not like you had expected anything different to happen, but it still hurt. Your heart stung and the pain filled your whole chest.

Without your brain even telling your body to do anything, you got up and stood in front of Midoriya. “I’m sorry, forget it. I gotta go.” You turned around on your heels and made your way back to the dorms, stumbling across the grass with trembling legs. This was a nightmare. An actual nightmare. The cold breeze stung on your tear-stained cheeks, but the light of the dormitories was already in sight, promising warmth, and a blanket to hide beneath.

“Y/N! Wait!” You heard footsteps coming closer quickly and Midoriya’s voice yelling your name. “Please wait!” Your legs stopped walking by themselves and you came to a halt. “I- I-,” he struggled for words, but nothing came out, he just kept on stuttering incoherent words and sentences. He reached out and grabbed your hand loosely, but you still felt the way his fingers trembled. “Let me go, Midoriya.” With your free arm, you wiped the tears from your cheeks that had begun to fall again. “Please.” Your hand dropped to your chest and you clutched your shirt directly over your heart. It hurt. It hurt so damn much.

“No.” Midoriya’s voice was quite yet he was sure of what he said. “Y/N, I- that was a lie.” He panted slightly from running after you. “My quirk,” Midoriya sighed as his grip on your hand tightened a little. “I used to be quirkless!” It felt like time stopped around you, Midoriya’s yelling echoed in your head but you could not make sense of it. “What?” You turned around slowly. Midoriya’s eyes were red and filled with tears, and he seemed to struggle with keeping his composure.

“I was born quirkless,” he repeated, calmer this time. His hand let go off yours and limply dropped to his side. “Somebody else gave me my quirk.” “All Might,” you mumbled and Midoriya nodded in confirmation. “Yeah. I inherited his quirk One for All.” He shook his head shortly. “But that’s not important right now.” Midoriya took a step toward you.

“Y/N, I-” a blush crept up his neck and painted his cheeks in a soft pink. “-I believe that you are my soulmate.” For what felt like the hundredth time that day, your heart skipped a beat. “But- but quirkless people-” “-don’t have a soulmate?” Midoriya finished your sentence. “I don’t believe that. And even if I did, it wouldn’t stop me from… from…” The faint pink changed into a deep red. “…liking you…” Your breath got caught in your throat. “You’re joking, right?”

“No! I like you, Y/N,” Midoriya repeated, more confident this time. “And I didn’t say anything because I felt the same way about being quirkless as you do, and because I thought that someone somewhere received the same quirk as me, but that’s not the case. I was born quirkless and I fell for someone who was born quirkless too.” His lips quivered as he told you this, probably dwelling in memories. Midoriya took a step toward you.

“Y/N, it doesn’t matter if we actually are soulmates or not.” He reached out and took one of your hands in his once again. “It doesn’t stop me from liking you. Please, go out with me?” All you were able to do was giving him a short nod.

[swtorpadawan]

Get to know the blogger

I was tagged by @raven-of-domain-kwaad​ - Thank you! No pressure tags: @storyknitter​ @uldren-sov​ @sullustangin​ @queen-scribbles​ @starknstarwars​ @haledamage​ @tishinada​ @fleeting-sanity​ @thevegalegacy​ and anyone else who wants to try it!

1. Why did you choose your url? I created this handle back when I first started posting SWTOR fanfic to FF.net. Then as now, SWTOR was the fandom I was most into at the time. And since I was a beginner at the fanfic game, I went with "padawan". It kinda worked, so I kept it on AO3 and later Tumblr.

2. Any sideblogs? I actually made a couple of sideblogs - one for non-SWTOR Star Wars, one for Critical Role. I haven't kept up either of them, though.

3. How long have you been on tumblr? *Checks Archive* July of 2018. Feels like a while, but I know many of you have been here much longer.

4. Why did you originally start your blog? Some of my readers on AO3 said there was a thriving SWTOR community on Tumblr, and that I should start posting my stuff there. I'm grateful for the referral.

5. Why did you choose your icon? I've had a few icons. Corellan Halcyon has always been my primary OC, and I am extremely grateful to @kitblueburdart​ for this art!

6. Why did you choose your header? Ozibaumnu and Nas'ash'dia are two of my favorite OCs, and are pretty popular with my humble readership. I had the idea of this piece for some time and I am very grateful to @theoasiswinds​ for turning my idea into reality!

7. What is your post with the most notes? Most of my highest-related posts are just shared from other platforms, so I don't really count those. As for my "original" post, my "Parents of Corellia - Please do not take your children to the zoo in the middle of a war zone" post is number one. Most people miss that bit of ambiant dialogue, and the events since then have made it even more powerful. 8. How many mutuals do you have? I never counted.

9. How many followers do you have? (checks) 933. I'm grateful for all of them. (Yes, even the porn-bots.)

10. How many blogs do you follow? (checks) 978. I know a lot of accounts are defunct, but something made me follow them.

11. Have you ever made a shitpost? Oof. Yes. Too many times to count.

12. How many times do you use tumblr a day? A lot. Its become my go-to "i'm bored and I have a free minute" app.

13. Have you ever fought another blog? I'm told there is a small group of blogs who were spreading some stuff about me and hoping I would quit Tumblr. It all sounded very 'high school' to me. I was disappointed at a couple of people, however, since I had considered them mutual friends.

14. How do you feel about “need to reblog” posts? Nope. Nope. Nope. Do not want.

15. Do you like tag games? Oh, I've done my share of those.

16. Do you like ask games? Way, way, way too much. As a result, my Inbox is overflowing with Asks and Prompts. I promise to get to them all someday.

17. Which of your mutuals do you think are tumblr famous? @greyias​ is possibly number one? I'm very grateful when she invites me to an event in the game.

18. Do you have a crush on a mutual? I do kinda have a crush on @chaosandwonder​ (please don't tell her though. She is WAAAAAY too good for me.  Or anyone else, really. 🥰 )

Thanks for the tag!

[mofieroll]

Cloud Nine (Giorno Giovanna x F!Reader)

A Post!VA Giorno Giovanna x Reader one shot where you meet him after being separated in childhood, and bond with his gang.

AU: Everybody Lives

Word Count: 5.4k

The rustling of papers, followed by a scribbling of pen, engulfed the room of a busy man. Daylight and wind coming from the balcony and windows helped him read through the documents with no problem. It was a nice sunny day, but it's nothing special for someone flooded with loads of work and responsibilities.

Since the day they defeated Diavolo, the previous evil boss of Passione, a mafia organization that stands at the top in Italy, and had his high-ranking position taken, the new boss made sure to achieve his justified dream and clean up the dirty mess in the organization. It was easier said than done: starting from removing and adding new rules, stopping operations that involved children and drugs, proving that he's worthy of being Passione's boss — as someone who has taken down a powerful boss with a heart of gold, he won't be one to use violent means to gain respect unless thoroughly provoked —, protecting himself against loyal followers of Diavolo, and many things that can either be said or is trivial in the mafia world.

That's just a gist of the work of Gang-STAR, Giorno Giovanna, and he's glad that he doesn't need to look out for his back because of his resilient comrades that he shared influencial goodness with.

“Giorno, Mista called me to meet you. I say, this must be something serious,” A man with straight bowl cut and gold pins wearing a black and gold suit entered after receiving permission to enter Giorno's office, “Are you going to send me somewhere?”

Giorno placed the documents and his pen aside, looking up to the man as he leaned his arms on his table, “Yes, although, it's a simple task.” He pushed a folder, which he got from a drawer, across the table for the other man to see.

The man took the folder and read the papers inside as he noted of the important details, “This is.. a profile of a girl and her father who's a well-known government official. For what exact reason did you show me this?”

“You should've known, Bucciarati. Of course we'd be babysitting that girl,” A man with long purple hair and lips who had a goth style entered, “Sorry not sorry for barging in, Giorno,” He lazily said as he walked to the two men on the table, the mentioned latter only nodding at him, “You could stop hiding now, Narancia. Giorno said it's okay for us to go in.”

“Eh? Are you sure, Abbacchio?” Another man, who seemed to be more fitting of the word best boy, peeked from the outside of the door, his orange headband being the most noticeable, “I didn't hear Giorno say something since we came here earlier!”

“Clean your ears, didn't you hear him talk to Bucciarati?” Abbacchio replied.

Giorno looked at Bucciarati as a demand of explanation, “We had hesitations on knocking, Giorno. It makes sense that you're busy and we wouldn't want to disturb you, especially since you haven't left this room for days.” He received, making him nod in understanding.

Narancia had now entered the room, reading the folder and sitting on the couch with Abbacchio as Bucciarati sat on one of the chairs in front of Giorno's table, “So, you're saying that I'll be bringing her to you from the airport, and that's it?” Bucciarati asked with ceased brows, receiving a quiet nod from the blonde.

“It doesn't make one hell of a sense. So what if she's the daughter of a politician? That doesn't make her special to have the mafia as her bodyguards,” Abbacchio raised a brow at Giorno, snatching the folder from Narancia's hold and slid it on the coffee table, “THAT doesn't make her special to have YOU as her bodyguard, Giorno.” He pointed out, resting his back on the couch with crossed arms like an angry dad.

Narancia scratched his head with a scrunched nose, “Isn't it exactly what makes her special? Being a child of a famous politician is no joke, so it'd be safer for them to have the mafia on their side, right?” He asked in confusion, making Abbacchio glance at him with an ‘I know that, idiot’ look.

Bucciarati cleared his throat, “What Abbacchio and Narancia's trying to say is, we understand that her life is on the line because she'll be alone for a whole month here in Italy, but why does it have to be you, Giorno, that has to take care of her? You have better things to do as Passione's new boss, we could easily do it for you.” He told Giorno who was expectant of their questions.

“That is not what I—”

“Yeah, totally! It's like how we did with Trish, you know? Oh, we could just take her to Trish too, Giorno! Girls have this thing for each other—”

Narancia stopped himself after receiving a warning glance from the capo, and also realizing that he was face-to-face with his boss. This is work they're talking about. Chats, even if it's with his closest friends, aren't welcome right now.

“I understand your concerns, Abbacchio, Bucciarati. And thank you for the suggestion, Narancia, but I've already decided that she'll be staying with me. I trust that she won't be much of a nuisance than we think she would be, so my significant work for Passione won't get disturbed. There is absolutely no reason to worry,” Giorno glanced at Bucciarati, “I would only need Bucciarati to bring her to me, and that will be all. You don't need to get involved, Abbacchio.”

“You made it sound like you know her well, Giorno. But since you gave me permission not to care, that's what I'll be doing. You have my thanks.” Abbacchio stood up and raised his hands, making a roll motion on one before he bowed and had the three men watch him leave the room.

Narancia did not follow the long-haired man, and instead firmly sat on the couch with a pout on his face, “Is there something you want to tell me, Narancia?” Giorno asked, figuring that the boy had an unspoken thought in his mind.

Bucciarati excused himself, bowing before he says that he'll be preparing the car. Narancia waited for him to leave before jumping from the couch to the seat in front of Giorno's table, who had been waiting for him to speak up.

“This is my only chance now that the oldies are out of the way— Giorno, can I go with Bucciarati?” He asked after preventing the chair from falling. Giorno nodded, “Then— can we hang with her? Like if she's with you and stuff? I'm.. kind of missing Trish so..”

Right, of course Narancia would be excited that a girl would be bonding with them again even if it's not Trish, who moved somewhere in Italy to continue and enjoy the life she deserved. Giorno saw no harm in letting his group connect with you, so he nodded once again.

Narancia grinned, jumping from the chair to the ground with a fist above. He faced Giorno to bow, almost reaching the floor, and ran to the door as he regained his energy. Giorno felt himself smile, silently glad that he got through an adventure with the same people that he's with now.

“Ah, thanks Giorno! You're the best boss! We'll be sure to bring [Y/N] safe!”

[Y/N].. [Y/N] [L/N]. The name of someone who he thought he'd never see again. Someone he met as Giorno, but kept calling him Haruno because she thought he'd remember him better if she does. Now that he recalls it, more flashbacks of you came into mind, driving him to have a break from work and chill on the balcony. He leaned on the fence and observed the garden below him.

You were a childhood friend of Giorno's that he met here in Italy. You belonged to a wealthy family who had connections to the people on the upper hierarchy, consisting of an overwhelming line of successful politicians. When he knew of this, he was already your bestfriend who you invited to hang out at your family mansion, and there he felt at home more than he did at his own. Your mother was a simple and humble woman while your father was the tough and thoughtful kind. Giorno saw for himself how you managed to be sweet yet cunning at the same time — you often scared off his bullies —, making him develop a puppy crush on you at the age of eight.

Everything was going well with you and your family on his side, your father privately scaring his father if he intended to hurt him more, your mother trying to make his mother understand that he needs proper loving and care. But then, it had to end. For a reason unknown to him and yourself, your family had to move to another country, and that's with no proper goodbyes.

It's not really the time to be melancholic, you're coming back at Italy after all. How did he even know of you and your family's whereabouts if you were gone in his life for a decade now? Simple, because if the boss of Passione aims to achieve something, he'll use his available resources to get it. Relating that to you, he'd say that connecting with your family and meeting you again was his goals, and he's proud that he overcame it. After speaking to your father and proving to him that he's to be trusted with your well-being and safety, he was informed that your father will be sending you to Italy for vacation. Your father even thanked him for appearing in the right time, saying that he wouldn't want you to be completely alone with strangers when he and her wife's away for work, and that you would be happier with him.

Technically, you'd be alone with strangers if you're with him too — his diverse gang crossing his mind —, but did your father mean it when he said you'd be happier with him? He didn't tell your father what he does in his life now, and that just proves how much he's trusted by the [L/N]s.

But will you trust him if you learn that he's the boss of a mafia organization? Yes, it's nonsense to doubt you. What matters is that you get to spend time together once more.

You're still his biggest crush and his first love now, after all.

—

You crouched outside the airport, your backpack resting in front of your chest as you faced your sunglasses on the back of your head. You know you looked ridiculous, but the boredom of waiting for Haruno had striked you. You arrived thirty minutes earlier, expecting that he'd be early too, but the cute familiar black-haired Japanese wasn't in sight. You were starting to think that your papa tricked you so that he could have your mama alone, but that didn't sound right for middle-aged people like them. Plus, why did they have to send you back here at your hometown just so you could be safe? Well, they obviously didn't know that you could take care of yourself with the help of your.. psh. None of it made sense, but since it's free vacation you're talking about, you just brushed off the complains.

“Excuse me, Signora, but are you [Y/N] [L/N]?”

A deep voice spoke from beside you, making you flinch in surprise. You could've sworn that the voice you heard was sexy, but what you saw when you looked up at the person beside you was much more sexier. You don't remember Italian men being this beautiful, “Yes! And you are?” You jumped to your feet, gulping as you stood in front of the man, “You aren't Haruno, are you?”

“Haruno..?” The man repeated and shook his head, “Sorry to disappoint, but no. My name is Bruno Bucciarati, a friend of Giorno Giovanna. I take it he's.. Haruno?”

You sounded an ‘oh..’ before nodding. You wanted to ask why he's here instead of your childhood friend, but you just waited for him to explain, not wanting to come off as rude.

“Alright, then you must be confused as to why I'm here instead of him?” He asked like he read your mind, making you nod, “I'll be brief for now, is that okay?” He asked again and you gave a pursed smile in return, noticing how he acknowledges your comfort, “Hm, to start off, Giorno has a busy work. It mostly takes away all his time, including now, so we volunteered to fetch you here and bring you to him.”

You were about to ask where he is now and what work does he do but you did not, thinking it must be private, “Is that so, Bucciarati? Thank you for your time, but you didn't have to do this! I could just wait until he's.. uh, free and not busy!” You smiled, “Besides, I'd be pretty jetlagged anytime now.. you could go with your friend and if it's no biggie, tell Haruno he shouldn't worry about me! I'll be here for a whole month anyways,” You convinced.

Bucciarati noted how you told him to go with his friend, connecting it with how he said ‘they’ volunteered. You're a perceptive one, huh? Abbacchio must be right, Giorno knows you very well, and that fact is enough for him to let you be the closest to him. You had to be someone Giorno's familiar with for him to guard you himself, someone who has to be special to him.

He smiled back at you, “I'm sure Giorno would love your company, Signora. Won't you be staying with him?”

And with that, Bucciarati had you speechless. He had reminded you that you'll be living with Haruno as a safety measure. It sounded cute when it came from your papa because he still saw both of you as kids, but now that you know that he works for a living, the realization that he's matured mentally and.. physically had hit you. The excitement of meeting him again didn't let the realization cross your mind when you agreed to living with him here.

But again, it's your best childhood friend you're talking about, so no complains.

You now sat on a couch of what seemed to be an office after the ride with Bucciarati and his other friends Narancia and Mista. You almost decided to have a happy crush on Bucciarati, especially on how soft he was around you, but you backed it off after meeting the other two who just had the most chaotic energies you aspired to have. You learned from Mista that Narancia struggled with mathematics so you told him that you could help him, while you noticed on the former that he had a pistol with him so you asked him if he could teach you sometimes, both offers being ecstatically agreed to. The plans for your vacation were going well, but you still haven't met Haruno. Sucks that you've been told to stay and wait at the room you're in without the candidates of who's going to be your vacation crush.

As you searched inside your bag, a person entered the room, “I'm sorry for making you wait, I went outside to buy food for us.” Thinking that the person was one of the first three you met, you didn't looked up and continued searching, only saying ‘It's fine!’.

The person, who happened to be Giorno, had three boxes of pizza and two tubs of ice cream in his arms. It was whack food for his reuniting with you, but he knows that you won't be having the energy to eat at a fancy restaurant right now. He'd be sure to take you in one, though.

He placed the foods on the coffee table and sat on the couch opposite of where you were, trying to have a proper look of your face. You had your natural [H/C] covering it though, your bowed head making it even impossible for him. He sat properly and faked a cough, at that you had already found what you were looking for.

You lifted your head, but unfortunately, the photo you were holding hid your face. Is he being teased right now?

On the other hand, you were smiling and admiring the photo. It had an image of you and Haruno, both your arms hanging on each other's necks as you cheekily grinned and he had a smile, your head resting on his. It was just one of the mementos you had, a lot of stuffs stored back at your room. Looking back makes you feel warm everytime, but it could be better if you met Haruno right now.

Giorno faked a cough once again, and you peeked, quickly putting back the photo inside after you saw a new.. face. He wore a black and green suit that bared his chest as he had his usual hairstyle, his long blonde hair tied into a fish braid while his hair's brim were rolled into three. Giorno was looking “mhm!” and you had to deny it, aiming not to embarrass yourself.

You placed your backpack beside you and fixed your sitting position, “Ah.. sorry, I thought you were someone I already met. I'm [Y/N] [L/N], do you own this place? Bucciarati and the others told me to wait here for Haruno, I could wait somewhere else if you want!”

It was a given that he'd be unrecognizable because of his hair and brows turning blonde, but Giorno had widened his eyes, shocked for one fact: you called him Haruno.

“Uhm.. hey? I'm sorry again. I'll just go wait outside now, thank you!” You were fast on clinging your bag to your shoulders and hurrying to the door, but not fast enough for the Giorno Giovanna with you. Before you could open the door, Giorno went beside you and held your wrist with a firm grip.

Giorno gulped the slump in his throat, “It's me, [Y/N],” He started, confusing you, “Haruno.. Haruno Shiobana.”

You dropped your backpack upon hearing this, a surprised face on you, “W-what? But.. he isn't.. are you.. no, there's no reason for you to do that. Is it.. really you? Like.. my Haruno Shiobana? My Giorno? My GioGio?” You held his shoulders and shook his taller form, your voice becoming more and more loud as you asked his names.

Giorno let out a tranced chuckle as he looked at your eyes, seeing your eyes express your excitement. Oh, how much he missed those, “Yes, [Y/N]. It's me, your Haruno.”

That was the confirmation you needed to finally burst out, your hands tightening on his shoulders as you jumped, “Can I.. can I hug you?” You politely asked, knowing how sensitive he can be to physical affection, and he slowly nodded.

You stomped your feet as a wide smile formed on your face, your eyes starting to well up tears. Wrapping your arms around his neck after you admired his beauty, locking him in a lodged hug, “I-I can't believe how much you've outgrown me! And blonde hair?! Are you kidding me?! It looks perfect on you! You were the cutest back then but now— I don't even know how to begin! Puberty hit you like an airplane crash when I'm here looking like a potato sack! You're really unfair, Haruno!”

Giorno had one of his rarest smiles on his face because of your adorable outburst, his arms wrapping around your waist to hug you back. You described yourself so wrong when your form and your charming personality wouldn't even have that as an option of definition. He lovingly rubbed your back, trying to soothe you as he felt warm tears on his shoulder, “Shh.. I wouldn't even dare challenge your own alluring beauty, cara.”

Unbeknownst to Giorno who was indulged in your hug though, a part of him was up and willing to challenge you.

His Stand, Gold Experience Requiem or GER, manifested behind him and on the side where you placed your head. Feeling a presence of someone, you looked up with quivering lips, gasping as your eyes laid on a gold humanoid floating behind Giorno. You stepped back and pulled the man with you, pointing to the humanoid, “H-Haruno! Look out!”

Giorno changed your position and pushed you behind him out of fighting instinct, giving him a decent look on his sentient Stand, “GER? [Y/N].. you can see it?” He turned to look at you and you nodded, “You're a Stand User too.. I didn't know about that.”

Giorno led you to the couch with GER behind him and sat beside you, explaining to you what a Stand is. You were glad to know that you weren't the only one with an ability who had a form that no one else around your home sees, so when he asked you to show your Stand, you confidently called for its name. It manifested behind you, its head resting on your shoulder. Giorno, as the sweetheart that he is to you, complimented it before asking its ability. As you were explaining your Stand's ability, both of your and Giorno's Stands now faced and admired each other's forms behind the couch.

“Stand Users attract each other, huh? That's neat.”

Abbacchio, who had his red and green headphones and his eyes closed, stood by the now opened door with crossed arms. Your Stands weren't bothered by the disturbance and just kept staring at each other while you and Giorno had your attention on the man.

“I-I'm sorry, would you like to join us? You must be Haruno's friend too, it would be great if we all got along, wouldn't it? He actually bought too much pizza so..” You informed after hesitating. You walked up to the door, Giorno following you while he had his eyes glued on Abbacchio, ready to warn him not to be rude to you, “I'm [Y/N] [L/N], and you must be?”

Abbacchio opened an eye and saw his boss' firm look. He clicked his tongue and pushed himself from leaning to face you, “Leone Abbacchio.”

Giorno softened when you turned to face him with a cheerful smile, “Haruno, can we call the others? Pizza and ice cream is better when shared, yeah?”

Abbacchio observed Giorno carefully, and he never thought he'd see him go all soft and protective just for a woman. The way he looked at you was different, like he adored everything about you and every word you say. Yet, this was the same Giorno who stepped out of his league to achieve his impossibly deadly dream. Giorno Giovanna never fails to surprise him, it seems.

“Yes, of course, as long as you're comfortable. I'll call them, you should go sit while you wait,” Giorno stepped aside, leting you walk back to the couch and join the staring contest between the Stands. He faced Abbacchio, “You should go sit with her, Abbacchio. How about you try to see if she's as special as I think she is?”

Abbacchio smirked on Giorno's challenge. He won't be able to use his old trick without a tea set available, but that isn't to say he doesn't have any more up his dress sleeves, “It's my pleasure, Don Giorno.”

Oblivious to Giorno's hands behind him, you caught his signal that both of you invented when you were children. It was made just for fun, usually used when you two hung out at your home and had nothing to do except to troll your parents and the helpers. It was fun seeing them get utterly confused with your and Giorno's antics, maybe it won't be so bad to have a little trip to nostalgia.

And needless to say, it was a fun trip, not just for you and Giorno, but for the whole gang, after seeing Abbacchio get his peach handed back to him from you. You had doubts if you should do that one prank you devised long ago against a man who looked like he knew of your deepest secrets, but it was successful nonetheless. The others got back to the office while you were doing it, and like they were used to the tense atmosphere caused by harmless waggery, they waited for the big reveal of who'll be the embarrassed and the victor. In this case, Abbacchio lost, hissing as he almost flipped the table in dismay, and you won, leaning on the arm of the couch as you made two peace signs and crossed your arms, a smug grin and black sunglasses on your face — which your Stand mimicked — while Narancia and Mista screamed behind you, the Sex Pistols jumping up and down your body as Aerosmith flew around. Bucciarati sat beside Abbacchio, calming him down, and Giorno was standing at the other end of your couch, smiling in amusement at them and in awe with you.

It has only been hours since you've met the gang, but the bonding was one of those spent with close friends. You felt at home with them, especially when Giorno's around, and they also did with you. Because of their experience with Trish, they had been inclined to thinking that guarding you isn't something of professional duty, although Giorno had thought of that from the start.

You were now laying and dozing off on the couch, the jetlag and drained energy getting to you. Giorno sat on the floor beside you, watching you as you slept peacefully.

Mista crouched beside Giorno as the others cleaned up, “Yo, boss. Shouldn't we put her to bed? She might wake up feeling uncomfortable.”

“She told me she..” Giorno had his face warm up, which didn't go unnoticed by Mista, “She wants to be close to me,” He said with the most unflustered voice he can do.

Mista surpressed a laugh, “Then go for it! Put her to bed and sleep with her! Aren't you childhood friends? The closest? Doesn't that mean you've slept with her before like when you're playing or something?”

Giorno sighed, still looking at you, “Well yeah, but this is different. We're not kids anymore.”

“Don't misunderstand, Giorno. You're just being by her side like she requested you to, she trusts you enough not to do anything that would ruin that trust. Besides, we all saw how you looked at her! It was obvious that you missed— Okay boss, I know you got it.” Mista, who had been carried away with giving advice, received a warning glance from Giorno, so he stopped himself and patted his boss' back before leaving.

Giorno patiently waited for everyone to leave — each of them giving him a thumbs up —, all the while sitted by your side as he thought of what Abbacchio said to him when he came back after the others had left.

“Hey, Giorno. She isn't a nuisance, at least. It's not everyday you get to spend a break with someone like her. Use your smart ass and don't ruin it.”

He was right, but what does he mean to not ruin it? You're resting, what else does he have to do? He could continue reading through his paperworks while he waited for you to wake up, that way he won't have to worry about those later and get to have more time for you.

It was settled. Giorno stood up and was going to walk to his table, only to be stopped by a hand. He looked back, and saw your hand unyieldingly holding his. Surprised, he checked your face, but you were still fast asleep and were not faking it. He hitched a breath, he's getting flustered over holding hands with you even if you closely held each other earlier. Did he intertwined his hand with you, or was it you who did it? To answer it, he tried to break free from your hold, but you tightened your grip.

“Gio..” You called for him, half-awake. You fluttered your half-lidded eyes as you tried to sit up, Giorno quickly helping you and sitting a little far from you after you've settled with folding your knees, his hand still in yours that rested on your lap. You covered your mouth with the other and yawned, “Ah, wooh! Remember when you.. asked me that one thing, Haruno?” You casually told him after stretching.

“I-it depends, [Y/N]. What thing is it?” Giorno gulped, are you not aware of your hands?

“It was your birthday.. it was the time we confessed our crushes to each other, to be precise,” You looked up and giggled on the memory, “I gave you a gift then you gave me a carnation flower. After that, you told me—”

“Is it alright if I ask you to be my someone like your mama is to your papa?” Giorno cut you off and squeezed your hand, recalling the exact words he told you that day. He began to like holding your hand, it would be a shame to let this miss.

You turned your eyes to him, “Yeah, that. I was wondering if you have someone right now who.. you know, who you asked that?” You gazed at him with pure curiosity, wanting to know more of the people he's most fond with. Meeting his squad had been a blast, and it would be great if you met his special one.

“Did asking you counted?”

“Wha?”

“Is it..?”

Awkward. Silence. You didn't expect him to answer like that, to answer with so much swiftness and poise like he already knew your question and had prepared what to say. Giorno surely grew out of his shell, and that thought made you smile unknowingly, which flushed him even more.

“Can I sit closer to you, [Y/N]?” Giorno tugged your hand after he asked, and you responded with facing to your side so he could move closer to you. You looked down on your clasped hands that broke hold with his, not knowing what to say when he literally confessed for the second time.

“Don't you feel cold with your open chest?”

“Can we hug again?”

Another. Awkward. Silence. You were trying to start up a new topic because it had been too quiet, but you were out of place. How do you even tell him that you still like him? Of course it isn't like the time when you were kids, shrugging off uneasy moments with outgoing replies and with the littlest of distractions. It had been years since you first saw each other, and the bond with the gang earlier helped you both catch up a bit, but it isn't going too well without them. Is it really alright to talk about such feelings now?

You glanced at the nervous Giorno and nodded, a small smile finding its way to his lips. He put an arm around your shoulder and gently pulled you in. You shifted your body and wrapped your arms around his torso, your head once again resting on his shoulder. With that, he proceeded to lock you in both of his arms as he placed his head on yours and closed his eyes, GER manifesting on your other side as it mimicked its user's hold on you.

Feeling your affectionate form nestle close to him is what he'd describe as his cloud nine, all the built-in stress being released as the snippets of emptiness that unfortunate circumstances brought were filled. How come you managed to be the same angel that he knew a decade ago? As someone incredibly whipped for you, he already knows the reason, but maybe he'd ask you of that sooner or later just to see you in a blushing state.

In the present, he'll gratify himself of this moment, the voice of Abbacchio saying that he should ‘use his smart ass and not ruin this’ echoing through his mind.

He kissed your crown as you snuggled closer to him, giving him the composure he needed to speak of his feelings for you, “Don't worry. You have the whole month to think of your answer to my question. For now, listen to my voice as I tell you how much you mean to me, even if I get separated from you for a devastating number of years.”

“Sei la luce della mia vita, amore mio.”

[End!]

[slowly-writing]

Coffee Shop

Peter Parker x Romanoff!Reader

Natasha Romanoff x Daughter!Reader

Part 2

Word count: 1094

Request for: anonymous

a/n: This turned into more of a Peter Parker story than the anon probably wanted. My bad, I got a bit carried away and strayed from the request

“Hey uh, I wanted to ask,” the guy leaning in towards you is nervous and you have to hold back a sigh. You know what he’s going to ask, it’s what everyone always asks.

“Yeah the Avengers are here a lot. They really like our coffee I guess,” you cut him off with your usual lie.

“Oh wow. That’s pretty cool. Have you ever asked for their autograph?” He asks and you laugh a bit.

“I haven’t, but if you’re going to, I recommend approaching cap first. He’s the most comfortable with that kind of stuff.” The man in front of you smiles.

“Woah! You must know them pretty well, huh?”

“You have no idea,” you mumble, walking off to make his coffee.

After he leaves you glance at the clock. It’s time for your break and you inform your coworker before approaching the table of heros.

“Do you guys really have to be here all the time? And in uniform?” You ask as you plop down into the open seat, “it’s kinda ridiculous.”

“We’re just looking out for you, kid,” you duck under Tony’s attempt to rustle your hair and glare.

“It’s a coffee shop, what’s the worst that could happen?” You ask and Clint starts listing off statistics about stalking.

“Clint, I think that was rhetorical. Y/n, we’re just trying to keep you safe,” your mom says and you roll your eyes.

“You couldn’t just walk me home like a normal family?” You whine and Steve points towards the clock on the wall.

“Your break is almost over.” You let out a sigh, getting up as the conversation is effectively shut down. At least they finally let you have a job. It took almost a year to convince them, and now they’re almost always someone posted in the shop when you have a shift. Baby steps.

You wander back behind the counter as the bell over the door rings. You glance up to see a boy from school walking in and the both of you blush as you make eye contact.

“Hey y/n,” he mumbles nervously and you smile despite the burning you can feel on your cheeks.

“Hi Peter,” you say softly, “what can I get for you?”

“A date,” he says before slapping a hand over his mouth. His eyes are wide and you can tell yours are too. “I’m so sorry! I don’t know why I said that-”

“Yes.”

“What?” he stutters, mind still reeling.

“I’d like to go out with you, if that’s what you want?” you say shyly and a smile takes over his face.

“Definitely. I’d love to take you out. On a date I mean. Not like in an assasin way. That’d be bad. Oh gosh, why am I even saying that, you’re gonna think I’m crazy-”

“Peter!” you cut off his rambling once more. “I don’t think you’re crazy, just a bit nervous. I don’t think it’d be safe for me to offer you a coffee in this state. I don’t need your heart literally exploding, so how about a smoothie?”

“A smoothie sounds nice,” he’s calmed down and you both smile at each other for a second before a voice behind him interrupts you.

“Is this guy bothering you?” your Uncle Steve growls, his focus more on Peter than you.

“Holy crap. Captain America!” Peter stares in shock, paling slightly.

“You think it’s fun to distract girls from their work?” Steve asks and your jaw drops

“Uncle Steve! He wasn’t bothering me! Leave us alone!” you cross your arms over your chest and you feel like you’re probably pouting like a child but I don’t care.

“U-uncle Steve?” Peter asks, looking between you and the man still glaring at him.

“Yeah, the one silentlly glaring at you from the corner would be my mom,” you nod towards your family’s table with a sigh.

“Your mom?!!?!?” Pete almost screams and you flinch, curling in on yourself more.

“Uh...yeah. Please don’t tell everyone at school,” you mumble out while avoiding eye contact.

“Oh, I won’t! It’s just...your last name isn’t Romanoff. I had no idea you knew the Avengers at all,” he explains softly, his small smile coaxing one out of you.

“I’m adopted. For my safety and all that we didn’t change my last name, it makes it harder for people who want to hurt her to find me. And I don’t talk about it much because-”

“Safety,” Peter cuts you off with an understanding nod.

“Yeah that and the chaos. You know how everyone at school would react if they found out I know the Avengers, let alone live with them. It’s easier to curb the mania by only letting my friends know,” you tell him and he seems to understand.

“That makes sense-wait! Your uncle Tony, that was…” he trails off and you laugh.

“Tony Stark? Yeah, he’s actually right behind you,” Peter spins around to see Tony theatrically stepping out of his suit.

“You bothering my niece kid?” Tony asks and Peter goes pale again.

“No sir.”

“Guys, he’s not bothering. You’re gonna scare him off!”

“That’s the point. You’re too young for boys,” your mom joins the conversation and you groan.

“I am not. Either way, can we have this conversation in private and not-”

“In front of the boy you’ve been crushing on for months?” Clint cuts you off and your jaw drops in shock.

“Uncle Clint! I trusted you to keep that a secret! Last time I confide in you,” you grumble and Peter smiles at you, he’s both trying to comfort you and glad the attention has shifted off of him.

“You knew who she liked and you didn’t tell me?” your mom asks Clint in a low voice.

“Yeah! Why didn’t you share with the group?” Tony chimes in and Peter leans towards you as the group gets caught up in their own conversation.

“Don’t be embarrassed. I’ve been crushing on you for months too,” he whispers and you smile, quickly grabbing a coffee sleeve and scribbling your phone number down.

“Here, text me later. Run while you can,” you whisper and he laughs before slipping past your family with a suspicious amount of agility.

“Wait-where’d he go?” Clint asks a few seconds later and you just roll your eyes.

tag list: @rvgrsbrns @rororo06 @freerebel @prizmix-and-friends @m19friend @worlds-in-words @5aftermidnight @riotmaximoff

[alarawriting]

52 Project #25: Where The Winds Of Limbo Roar

... it is a point of pride to me that I never reuse a title, not even between fanfic and original fic. The title of this almost certainly should be “Veteran of the Psychic Wars”, except I already titled an X-Men AU fanfic that, so I pulled the title from another part of the lyrics.

Story derived from a prompt from @writing-prompt-s. I’m not putting a link on a story as long as Tumblr search is so broken that it excludes posts with links, so check the reblog to my main blog @alarajrogers for the full credits.

***

When their guard patrol passed the building where the psychics sat or laid on their mats, deep in their meditations, Soffrees snorted. “Look at that,” he said, pointing a thumb behind him at the windows of the battery. “We go out on the front lines and risk our lives. They sit in an air-conditioned room, or they nap in it, and they get served their food without even getting up to go get it… and they get paid three times what we do. What the fuck, man?”

“I know, right?” Baslicos chuckled grimly. “Be born with telepathy! Get the whole world handed to you on a platter! Join the army, get pampered like it’s a resort for rich old ladies!”

“What do they even do that’s worth that kind of money?” Soffrees shook his head. “They tell us ‘they defend us from psychic attack.’ Well, you know, I wear this chain—” he took out his charm chain, with his tags and all the charms on it, and waved it a bit – “to protect us from attacks from pink hippoceroses! And see, it works great, because when was the last time you were attacked by a pink hippoceros? Now gimme more money!”

“I knew a guy in basic training, always used to claim he was under psychic attack. Turned out he was just nuts, man.” Baslicos turned the corner – and ran straight into a tall, heavily-muscled man in a top brass uniform. She backed up. “Oh, sorry, sir—” and then her eyes went wide, as if registering who he was. “General Marcus! Sir! I apologize for running into you, sir!”

Marcus waved a hand. “At ease, private, no need to fall all over yourself apologizing. Just watch where you’re going next time.”

“Sir,” Soffrees said, almost reverently. “Can I tell you what an honor it is to meet you, sir? I went into the army because of the stories I heard about you!”

Marcus was a 60-something man with a shock of white hair that apparently rank and age allowed him to get away with not combing into regulation haircut or shaving; it was wild and bushy on his head. There was a small black bird sitting on his shoulder. Stories had it that he had been in combat since he was a young child; that he was immune to psychics; that he’d single-handedly captured the commander of the Ferlan army and forced them to surrender, twenty years ago… and many other stories that made him legendary. “I agree, sir!” Baslicos said. “It’s an honor! You’re a great hero!”

“You kids,” Marcus said, shaking his head. “You focus on the wrong things.” He gestured over at the psychic battery. “I heard what you two were saying about the psychics. You talk about what a great hero I am because I’ve been out on the front lines my whole life, but you don’t even think of who supports you, who lets you go out and serve without poking your own eyeballs out of your head.”

“Sir, I’ve never met anyone who’s been attacked by psychics,” Soffrees said.

“Sure you have. Right now. Me.”

“You? Uh… wasn’t that a long time ago, sir?”

“It sure was,” Marcus agreed. “Because for the past twenty-five years or so I haven’t served in an army that didn’t have a psychic battery, and because I’ve trained my own abilities so even when I’m outside battery range, and inside the range for an enemy battery, they can’t get through. But that’s me. Just two years ago at Fire Heights, we lost five soldiers to a psychic attack when an enemy missile took out our battery. You never heard about that?”

“I was in Basic at the time, sir,” Soffrees admitted.

“I, uh, hadn’t signed up yet. Sir.” Baslicos looked down for a moment as if she was ashamed of not having served for even as long as Soffrees.

“Well.” He motioned the two guards over to the grass on the side of the building. “You’re relieved for a bit. Sit your asses down and get educated.” He turned to the bird. “Find Lieutenant Kallimik and tell her to assign two guards out here for the next hour or so to cover for these two – what are your names?”

“Private Soffrees, sir!”

“Private Baslicos!”

“Right. To cover for Soffrees and Baslicos, because I’ve got them.”

“Two guards. Cover for Soffrees and Baslicos. Asshole,” the bird said.

Marcus sighed. “Not asshole. Can we just forget I ever called Kallimik that?”

“Birds don’t forget. Asshole.”

“Not asshole. If I hear you relayed ‘asshole’ you don’t get any bacon tonight, you hear me?”

“I’m Falli. I love bacon. No asshole.”

“So what are you telling Kallimik?”

“Two guards. Cover for Soffrees and Baslicos. Not asshole.”

“Just go deliver the message,” Marcus said wearily, and Falli flew off. “Messenger corvids. ‘It’s better than sending an encrypted message on a bird’s leg!’ ‘You can train a corvid to carry the message to the right person and not deliver it to anyone else!’ ‘Corvids recognize faces and telepaths can’t read them!’ I miss the days when we sent columbines. Those birds weren’t smartasses.”

“Sir, columbines can’t talk. How did you send messages?” Baslicos asked.

Marcus raised an eyebrow. “What do they teach you kids? We’d tie coded messages on paper to their legs, or give them tiny backpacks to wear. I know, corvids can be given more destinations, they’re smarter, and if they’re shot down, the enemy can’t get the message off of them. But columbines make pretty coos, not wiseass comments about an offhand remark you unwisely made about a subordinate one time.” He sat down on the grass, next to a patch of dirt left from too many people taking shortcuts, and patted the ground. “Come sit, privates.”

Somewhat awkwardly, the two soldiers sat down. “What are we doing, sir?” Soffrees asked.

“Getting yourself an education. You think the psychics aren’t important? Aren’t worth protecting, because they’re not doing anything as serious as what you guys on the front line do? I’m going to tell you about the psychic attack I survived, that no one who was with me did.”

The two soldiers arranged themselves in respectful positions. Their opinions were their opinions, but both of them practically hero-worshiped General Marcus, and if he had something to say to them, they’d listen raptly.

***

“It was during the War for Independence. We’d been moving in from two directions to secure the Gap – I know you soldiers know where the Gap is, right?” In the dirt, with a short pencil he’d had in a pocket, he drew a squiggle for a mountain range, a gap of a few inches, and then a second squiggle. “We were here and here—” He drew X’s in front of the two mountain ranges – “and then they came pouring through the Gap before we could get there.” Extra scribbles to demonstrate the enemy, as a funnel with the narrow bit through the Gap and the wide part between the two X’s.

“Now we had the numbers, between our two groups, that we could have crushed the Monarchists, if we moved fast enough that we could prevent them from getting reinforcements through the Gap. But they had far too many soldiers for either of our groups to defeat them on our own. We had to coordinate the attack. Problem, of course, was the large mass of enemy soldiers between us.

“We sent out several messenger birds. Columbines, in those days. I don’t know how many. A lot. None of them came back. Back then, we had a lot fewer telepaths and they weren’t as well trained. We couldn’t get a message through by psychic, either. If we were to have any hope, a team of people was going to have to cross through enemy territory, deliver the message, and then back, with confirmation.

“Captain Noori picked me and three other soldiers as her crack team to get the message through. Their names were Anders, Caprikin, and Starros. That doesn’t mean anything to you, I know. You look at me as a hero, because I’ve survived. I fought the Willel when they conquered my homeland. I fought for the Demos here in Danza. I fought in every war we’ve had since, and I lived. So I’m a hero. And Noori, Anders, Caprikin and Starros are forgotten. They shouldn’t be. They were bigger heroes than me; they gave their lives to the cause. They were people, like all of you, not numbers.

“Anders and Caprikin fought the Willel with me. I was eleven when Anders and I started doing occasional sabotage, but we didn’t get really effective as guerrillas until Caprikin joined us. He was short – so short, and so baby-faced, he looked eight when he was thirteen, and he looked like a Willel, and he could speak their language without an accent. He’d find a soldier alone, or two soldiers, near an alleyway where we could hide, and he’d pretend to be a Willel boy who’d lost his mother. Sometimes it didn’t work. Willel soldiers could be brutal. One time one of them struck him with the butt of his rifle, in the face. It wasn’t safe or easy work by any means. But when he succeeded at it, when he distracted them and they got involved in trying to help him, we’d come out of the alley with our knives and the guns we’d stolen off the bodies of the last Willel soldiers we’d done this to, and that was that.”

He chuckled, remembering. “The wild thing was that he looked like this innocent lost lamb, but Caprikin was the funniest, most foul-mouthed son of a bitch you would ever have served with. He always had a wiseass comment for any situation. Me, I have no sense of humor, so I don’t even remember any of his jokes… it was years and years ago, but it upsets me. Why didn’t I write this stuff down when I had the chance? Why did I trust to memory?... You soldiers need to write things down. Take pictures. The people you’re fighting beside right now, they’re going to be a part of your life until you die, even if they died forty years ago. Even if you don’t like them. You’re all going through hell together; that forms a bond you’ll never forget, but you’ll forget the details. You’ll forget their faces, you’ll forget the jokes they told…” His voice drifted to a stop as his gaze went far away.

“Sir?” Baslicos prompted.

Marcus’ eyes came back into focus. “…oh, here’s something I remember about Caprikin, but it isn’t a joke. We signed up to fight the Monarchists, all three of us together, and the sergeant doing the recruiting said Caprikin couldn’t join. He was too small, too weak. He’d get killed. So he put on one of our travel knapsacks – even heavier than yours, we had literally everything we still owned in them. Must have been 50, 60 pounds. And he politely asked the sergeant if he could demonstrate his skills, and asked the sergeant to come at him. The sergeant was a big bruiser of a man; he laughed, but he did it… and Caprikin used his momentum to lay him out flat on his back. Sergeant didn’t say a single word against him signing up, after that.

“Anders was a lot more serious than Caprikin. Very quiet fellow, very restrained. He was a low psychic, though, and when we figured out what he could do, when we were eleven, that was when we started risking ourselves to fight the Willel. That, and they’d just killed his father. He could send out a… targeted wave of ‘don’t notice anything.’ You know the fellows with the low psychic ability ‘don’t notice me?’ Where they can walk right past you and unless you’re blocking psi, you don’t even see them? Anders was a little more powerful than that. He could make it so everyone around him, in a donut-shaped range where we at the center wouldn’t be affected, would just… stop noticing anything unusual. We two, and we three when Caprikin joined us, could just run past a few guards, covered in blood and carrying weapons, and they wouldn’t even look up.

“By the time he was an adult, Anders had a lot more control over his field, so he was generally sent out on scouting parties. He used it on leave and on the rare occasions when we weren’t in an army to go exploring. Bird watching. Used to draw them. When he started as a kid he had some talent but by the time he was a man he was amazing. You’d have thought those birds would fly off the page. He drew other things, too, things from nature, always. He refused to draw pictures of any of us. Said he wasn’t good enough. I wish he had.

“Starros… she was such a strange one. Some people called her “the Robot” because she hardly ever showed emotions in her tone of voice. More or less everything was a harsh monotone, unless she was really happy or excited, and then it was a bubbly high-pitched monotone. She had an amazing poker face – her face just never changed, no matter what her hand was – but I learned her tells. She’d drum her fingers on her knees, under the table, and when she was anxious, she’d drum faster. Starros wasn’t interested in romance, or sex – didn’t even much like hugging, and she’d just stand around looking confused and embarrassed if you said something like ‘You’re a damn good friend.’ She didn’t get any of that. But she’d kill or die for her friends. If there were five rations and four people and Starros and they were her friends or comrades, she’d tell them to take the last ration and divide it out. She’d drop whatever she was doing to help you. Didn’t know how to say ‘I love you’ or ‘I like you’ or even ‘You’re my friend’, but she’d drive the getaway car through the flames of hell and crash the gates of the Demon Emperor’s palace to get you out, and cover you while you were running for the car.

“Anders and Caprikin and I spent our childhood fighting; she spent hers studying weaponry. Reading about it. Reading about war. She was obsessed with it. I don’t normally think book learning is ever a match for experience, but in her case… I guess it depends on the book, and how many of them you read, and how close you read them. Every weapon any of us used, she knew how to clean it, how to take it apart if it was a thing you could take apart, how to use it and more importantly when to use it. Any weapon the enemy used against us, too, and she knew all their strengths and weaknesses. Funny thing was, for all she knew about guns, she couldn’t shoot one worth a damn. Couldn’t aim it. I never saw her hit the broad side of a barn. But give her something she could hit the enemy with – a cudgel, a knife, a sword, even a morningstar – and she was amazing. You couldn’t stop her.

“We were – well, I’m not going to say we were the best of the best. I don’t know that. But I can say we were some of the best, and that’s why Captain Noori picked us to accompany her.

“Noori, now. She could shoot. She was an amazing sharpshooter – could take the tuft of feathers off the head of a flying cardinal. She fought in the resistance against the Willel, too; she was in a re-education camp at one point, when she was a child. They tried to strip her of her religion, her language, her culture, and what they got was a lifelong enemy. She got her start shooting messenger birds with her slingshot as they crossed over her city, taking them down with rocks. I think she was doing that when she was nine. Even younger than I got my start.

“In combat she was incredible. She’d stay absolutely in control, all the time. Starros might have seemed like a robot out of combat, but in combat she’d scream, she’d shriek and howl and groan just like most of us do. Whereas I never heard Noori make a sound she hadn’t decided to, not in a fight, not until the end. You couldn’t hear her move, either. In darkness, she turned invisible – you couldn’t see her with her dark skin and her dark uniform, and she didn’t make a sound when she walked. We joked she’d been a cat in a past life.

“Out of combat, though… she could be tough, as a leader, but back then there were a lot of female soldiers who thought they’d impress the rest of us by being tough all the time, never show any emotion but anger, and Noori was never one of those. She was always as kind as she could possibly be to civilians, and if she saw a kid in trouble, she’d help – with us watching her back, of course, because Anders and Caprikin and I all remembered how we’d used that against the Willel. She cried when the battles were over and we counted up the dead; she’d walk among them and say their names and whisper prayers for every one of them, with tears running down her face. One time, one of the privates was upset because he couldn’t write his mother a letter; turned out it was because he’d never learned to read or write. She’d come to the barracks at night and work with him, taking an hour or two every night to teach him.

“We’d have willingly followed Noori to hell. Which is what we ended up doing.”

He lost himself for a bit then, but caught his thread back before either of the soldiers had a chance to try to prompt him. “We were going to cross the Gap along the mountain range line, where the Monarchist presence was as narrow as it got, but of course their presence was thicker there than elsewhere, so we ended up having to spend a day moving around the edge of the territory they held to get to a place that was favorable for us to cross through.” With the pencil, he drew the movements he and his squad had made, against the rough map he’d already drawn in the dirt. “And then the second day, it rained. Well, of course, when you’re trying to sneak across enemy territory, rain’s usually to your advantage, so we made good progress, until the wind whipped up and it was just one step short of a hurricane. We had to dig ourselves a bunker and take shelter in it until the wind died down.

“What we didn’t know was that this was going to smash up one of the Monarchist barracks to the north of us, so they’d called in help from their people south of us. Of course, that meant we ended up running into the Monarchists marching north. We saw some combat, then. The point to sending a tiny group of five soldiers across enemy territory is to make it more likely that they don’t get caught, obviously, because five people can’t fight off an entire army. If it wasn’t for Anders’ ability and the fact that there are a lot of natural caves in that area, we’d never have made it. We had to hide out in a cave. The Monarchists searched for us for five days. We ran out of rations, had to drink from a muddy spring in the cave. By the time they were finally gone, we were… not in good shape.

“So we were less careful, on the rest of our journey. We had to steal food, since we were out of rations, and we weren’t covering our tracks as well as we’d been. Anders was overpsyched, couldn’t hide us anymore without terrible migraines, and he was tough and loyal, he’d have tried, but Noori wouldn’t inflict that on him. She decided that our best strategy was speed. And that meant we couldn’t pussyfoot around trying to sneak around a sentry or two; we just needed to kill them and keep moving.

“By the time we got across the Monarchist territory and back into Demo-held lands, the entire Monarchist army on this side of the Gap knew about us.

“We knew it was going to be hard, getting back across the Gap. We knew we’d made it hard for ourselves by racing across the territory, killing every Monarchist we ran into. But our window was closing; messenger birds from our spies and sympathizers said that there was no more than two weeks before Monarchist reinforcements spilled into the Gap. It was a four-day trip across the Gap if you didn’t have to take a day to detour around enemy territory and you didn’t have to hide in a bunker for a day and a cave in five more. Our comrades over here couldn’t give us more than a week to get the message across. And we’d have no way to get the message back here that we had, or hadn’t, gotten the message to our people.

“The message was that our partners on this side of the Gap were going to move in a week. And they were taking a leap of faith, because if we didn’t get the message through to our side in time, if our side didn’t mobilize and join them in a pincer movement to crush the Monarchists, these Demos would be crushed themselves, and we’d be next. No matter what it took, we had to get the message across in a week.

“Of course we knew better than to send people with secret information in their brains; we knew the enemy had telepaths. I’m sure you all know about me – it’s hardly a well-kept secret nowadays that I’m a blocker. They hypnotized the others, our psychics putting blocks in their head so they wouldn’t be able to remember what the message was until we got back to our side. I was the only one who remembered – but they all knew I knew it, so when I told them how much time we had to get the message through, they knew it was important.

“We had five days.  Five days, to make a trip that took us eleven on the way in.

“They sent us with Elias, a combat psychic. Now, I see that look on your face. You’re wondering, if there’s such a thing as a combat psychic, how come our telepaths in the battery don’t go out into the field? Why don’t we have combat psychics?”

Soffrees said, “Uh, I wasn’t going to interrupt you to ask, sir, but… yeah, why don’t we have combat psychics? Sir.”

“The answer is, we do, but you haven’t met any yet, because the telepaths in the battery are so much more powerful than a combat psychic could ever be. Combat psychics have to worry about being hungry, having to pee, watching where they’re walking, not getting killed by enemy fire… put it this way, can you read a book while you’re walking? Through enemy territory? When you might be sniped at any moment, and there’s trees all around you could walk into? Trust me. Psychics are a lot more effective when they’re free to meditate in silence and use all of their mind on their power. We don’t need combat psychics right here because the battery right over there—” he pointed back at the building with the psychics in it—“puts up a wall of psychic defense with such a large radius, none of you have yet been deployed out of it.

“But we needed Elias, because the moment we crossed an invisible line, a short distance into the territory they’d claimed, he reported that the Monarchist psychics were after us.

“Anders did everything he could do. Elias did what he could do; I didn’t know him well, but he was a good man. Noori, Caprikin, Starros and me did our best to protect them both so they could devote more of their brainpower to shielding us.

“The Monarchists had destroyed forests and farms, turning a lot of the countryside into wasteland where you could see straight to the horizon, but they couldn’t do anything about the fact that technically, the Gap is still part of the mountains, just a part that sank low enough that now there are hills and crags and rocks set into the earth, all over the terrain, instead of mountains. We made as much use of terrain cover as we could. Did our best to avoid getting caught by anyone, because we knew the moment we killed a sentry to silence him, their psychics would be on us. Elias and Anders were protecting us by making it so the psychics couldn’t tell exactly where we were, but the enemy had battery telepaths; there was no way Elias and Anders could stand up to an attack by high psychics in a battery.

“We were a day from the border, a day away from home, crossing through some very rocky territory, when they found Elias.

“I don’t know what he saw. He screamed, and wouldn’t stop, to the point where we had to gag him to keep him from summoning the enemy from all around. Anders tried to surround him with his field, but it was no good – the high psychics in the enemy battery had locked onto him already. We had to abandon him, to try to outrun their ability to triangulate on us next. Never saw him again, not even as a name on the rosters from prisoner exchange when we finally beat the Monarchists, so… I’m pretty sure he died there.

“We ran. We tried to find a vehicle – a car, a carriage, maybe a horse – that we could steal and make better time, but we couldn’t find anything before they found us. For a few hours the others saw hallucinations – it was Starros who confessed to it first, saying she kept seeing her mother and older brother calling her, and then everyone but me mentioned they were seeing them too. They didn’t all admit to who or what they saw. We knew this was bad – hallucinations meant they were catching us in the edge of their effect, and that meant they were focusing in – but what could we do? Anders tried, for all the good it did us, but all that happened was for half an hour he didn’t see any visions. He was far, far too overpsyched by then to fight them off in any meaningful way.

“On a grassy plateau surrounded by sheer rock on one side and a relatively small drop on the other, they zeroed in on us, and attacked, full force. The others all started screaming, and dropped to the ground, all of us but me.

“Noori was crying for her parents – she seemed to be remembering how she was taken away from them and thrown in a re-education camp – but then she started shrieking, ‘No! No!’ She got up, backed away, and ran – straight into the stone wall. And then she just kept getting up and running into the stone wall, over and over. I tried to pull her away, to stop her – she was smashing up her face, there was blood and contusions all over her head – but when I grabbed her and bodily dragged her, she fought me like I was one of the monsters she was seeing, and then she broke free of me – after breaking my nose and two fingers – and slammed into the wall again.

“Starros thought the ground had become glass. Very, very fragile glass. She kept screaming at all of us to get to safety before it broke, it was going to break. I think she saw her family members, and maybe friends of hers, fall through the glass. There couldn’t have been anything good underneath it. She was sobbing, begging us to get to safety before the glass broke, crying because she couldn’t save us. She thought her weight would surely break the glass if she went out on it to try to rescue us.

“Caprikin thought he was covered in – something. I don’t know. Spiders? Snakes? He thought they were all over his skin and pouring out of every orifice, and he stripped naked and started ripping at his skin with his nails, trying to get whatever it was off him. Then he started screaming about how they were burrowing into his skin, they were inside him, and he started throwing himself at the ground, over and over… and I couldn’t stop him, either.

“And Anders just calmly put his own eyes out with his thumbs, pulled out his tongue and bit it off, grabbed a long, thin wire brush we used to keep the equipment clean and shoved it into one ear as far as he could push it, and then farther. I don’t know if he actually managed to pierce his brain with it, but he fell over unconscious after that.

“But I’m a blocker. I wasn’t touched. I can’t project. I couldn’t make a field around my friends like Anders could. But they couldn’t touch me.

“Almost.”

He sighed deeply. “I hated that, you know. Sometimes you think the weirdest things in combat. I saw my friends writhing and screaming and going mad all around me, and if I could have saved them, I’d have been grateful for my blocking ability. But I couldn’t. So all I could do was watch them suffer, under an attack that left me be, and… part of me wished I wasn’t a blocker. That if we were going to die, we would all die together. Stupid, I know. And the duty ahead of me wouldn’t allow me to die with them if I could help it, under any circumstances.

“I had to leave them. I was alone, with no support, with four friends that were dying of madness, and I couldn’t save them, I couldn’t even help them. I figured I could maybe knock them unconscious and hopefully they’d be better when they woke up, but if I did that, I couldn’t keep moving with them. If I left them behind, they’d be captured or killed. If I stayed with them, I’d be captured or killed. And I was the only one with the message, the vital message that would drive the Monarchists out of the Gap if I got it through, and would result in both groups of Demos being massacred if I failed.

“I didn’t have the strength to put them out of their misery. Emotional strength, not physical. I had a gun, I could have done it, but I couldn’t make myself end my friends’ lives. I rationalized, telling myself, maybe they’d be captured, maybe we could ransom them back with a prisoner exchange. Telling myself I didn’t need to kill them, because even if they were taken captive, the secret was buried in their brains deep enough that the enemy psychics wouldn’t be able to get it out. Like that was the only consideration. Like I wasn’t dooming them to dying horribly of their madness, or being executed by the Monarchists.

“I knocked Caprikin out, and Noori. Anders was already out, and Starros hadn’t done herself any physical damage, so I didn’t need to knock her out, and I wanted to leave her with maybe the ability to defend herself? Maybe, if the psychics let up, she could… do something?

“I was lying to myself, of course. The psychics wouldn’t let up. They’d peel her brain, looking for the secret, since the other three were unconscious. Wouldn’t find it – our psychics were good, they knew how to bury an encoded secret properly – but that wouldn’t stop them from trying. And if a squadron of Monarchists found them, she wouldn’t be able to fight back – she wouldn’t even be able to leave the tiny bit of land she was squatting on, the only safe place she thought existed.

“I left my friends behind, and I ran, because so many more of my friends would die if I didn’t.

“I mentioned that I was almost immune to psychics. I’m not a blocker in a battery, though, with a whole team of projecting blockers with me. I was just me; they had a battery. So they managed to break enough of my walls loose that they made me hallucinate, like they’d made the others hallucinate before. I saw my friends, dripping with blood, asking me why I left them behind, saying they despised me for abandoning them. My family, during the occupation, and the things the Willel might have done to them after they disappeared and I never saw them again. I could see the real world, faintly, behind the hallucinations, so when enemy soldiers turned up, I was able to fight them. But the psychics made me see them as something else. I’d blow a man’s head off, and he was Caprikin, back when we were boys. I’d stab a woman who was trying to stab me, and she’d be Noori.

“I’ve been fighting in wars all my life. I’ve seen so many dead. Lost so many friends, lost my family – I’m used to grief and horror. I walk with it every day, I see it in my dreams. So they couldn’t break me. They tortured me the entire way back to our camp, and a few times I was almost killed because I was too distracted by illusions to fight back, but they couldn’t stop me, no matter how much psychic force they turned on me. The only reason they didn’t hit me with overwhelming real-world force was that I was blocking them too hard – they didn’t know where I was the way they’d known where my friends were. They could reach the edges of my mind, but they couldn’t get in deep enough to know where to send soldiers after me.

“I got back through the border and I got the message through and you know how the Battle of the Gap went. But I didn’t fight in it. As soon as I got the message through, I broke. They weren’t still attacking me, but they’d poured so much poison into my mind, now it was attacking itself. All the guilt I felt at leaving my friends behind, all the guilt I’d always felt at being the only member of my family to survive, and the thought that maybe they were taken because the Willel knew about my resistance activities, and went to my house to get me, and took my family instead because I wasn’t there… I heard my family denouncing me, telling me I’d gotten them killed. I still saw Noori and Anders and Caprikin and Starros. Sometimes even Elias. Other friends I’d lost over the course of the wars I’d fought. I was 27 years old and I’d been fighting since I was 11. I’d lost a lot of friends in that time.

“It didn’t stop until the battle was over, until they were able to get me in front of a high psychic on our side who was able to bury most of the damage. Not remove, not eliminate, not cure… bury. I still see those things, sometimes, as nightmares mostly, or when everything’s quiet and I’m trying to sleep. I’m in my 60’s now. It’s pretty clear to me that I’ll see those visions until I’m dead. I’m used to them now but they still horrify me.”

The two soldiers’ eyes were wide. “Sir, I… I’m sorry,” Baslicos whispered.

“We didn’t know,” Soffrees said.

“Of course you don’t. If you take a medicine for your headache, and it’s so good you never get a headache, sooner or later you might get to thinking, wow, I don’t have a problem with headaches anymore, why do I have to keep taking this drug? That’s human nature.” He stood up and brushed off his pants. “They should have taught you in Basic, and I’m going to have to see about our training programs for new recruits. They need to make it clear what the psychics do. Because those men and women in there? They find spies, and bombers with ‘you don’t see me’ powers. They root out enemy secrets. They’re an early warning system, they know when enemy forces are approaching. And they protect you, every day, from horrors that could melt your mind. Because that’s what psychics do, in a combat battery. They find the enemy and they drive them insane. Ours, theirs, all the psychics do that And all of them protect their people from the enemy psychics who are trying to do the same thing.”

“I thought that was supposed to be a war crime,” Baslicos said tentatively. “Driving the enemy insane?”

“It’s not. They debated it, but in the end, it’s not. Because you can’t tell the difference between a man that the psychics peeled for information and a man they just deliberately drove mad – both are going to act the same level of fucked-up, and none of the world’s nations want to give up the advantage being able to use psychics to read prisoners for information would give them.” He shook his head. “You ask me… it should be a war crime. Our psychics should be defending us, not doing that and trying to break the enemy at the same time. But, it wasn’t my call, and that’s how war goes.”

He lifted his head backward, gesturing at the battery. “Those poor bastards in there, they burn out. One slip-up and an enemy psychic might get into them, rip their minds apart. And even if that never happens… they do their tour and then they’re haunted for the rest of their lives, because they committed atrocities, and they know it, and they felt it from inside the minds of the people they were doing it to. Or, even if they didn’t… they felt it when it happened to our soldiers, the people they’re protecting. You think they’re being pampered? Just because someone’s taking care of their bodies? They’re shitting in diapers and they can’t even feel it. Someone feeds them mush, like they were infants, and they can’t feel it. They’re on the front lines, with their minds, the whole time they’re in there.”

“We didn’t know,” Soffrees repeated.

“You do now, private. So make sure you tell everyone else you know, if it comes up. You defend those people with your life. Because if it wasn’t for them… there are worse things than death, and I’m telling you, these are the people who will save you from those things.”

He motioned their relief over. “You guys can go back to whatever you were doing; I’m releasing Soffrees and Baslicos back to their watch. Tell Lieutenant Kallimik I want my bird back.”

“Sir, your bird called Lieutenant Kallimik an asshole,” one of the two guards said.

“Goddamnit it.” Marcus facepalmed. “I told that bird. Yeah, okay, tell Kallimik I’ll see her in person to get my bird back before she eats it, and you can tell Falli I said no bacon tonight. Not one little bit.”

“We’ll let the Lieutenant know, sir,” the other guard said, and the two of them marched off, as Soffrees and Baslicos resumed their patrol, and the General went wherever he’d originally been going.

[chappedandfadedvds]

Nov 7th, Saturday 14:20

„Happy birthday!!“

„Thank you so much, can I be celebrated for days now every year? I really enjoy this.“ Jens joked as he stepped into the livingroom following Senne who had let him and Lotte in.

They even had put up a glittery banner and had a couple of colourful balloons grazing the floor. There was a set table and a cake filled with candles to the brim. Probably exactly 18 and Jens was pretty sure he would not be able to blow them all out at once. They all wore these tiny party hat cones on their heads, Lotte loving hers the minute it was put on when they entered.

„Next year were aren’t celebrating at all to equal it out, so you better make the most of it today.“ Sander declared getting up from his shared sofa with robbe, moving over to pull  him into a tight hug. Robbe directly taking over, congratulating Jens once more as the two of them swayed from one foot onto the other in their embrace. He loved this boy so much.

„I can’t believe that you are eighteen. You are becoming a boring adult.“ He heard Robbe whisper giggling as they both pulled back far enough to look at each other grinning, not having let go yet.

„You’ll be eighteen soon too, so you better watch your words, young man.“ Jens joked as he saw his sister being picked up and swung around by Sander. He supposed this and the cake were her only two reasons for coming with.

„At least we have our university years left to fuck it all up, I guess.“ Robbe said happily as Jens kept smiling brightly, while his heart though tightened almost painfully at that thought. He didn’t want to think about it. Not now. Not with people around. Not with Lotte close by to see him.  He swallowed it down and for some sort of miracle did Zoe appeared next to them.

„You can keep cuddling all day, if you want, but I wann hug Jens too.“ She complained quite amused as Robbe stepped away, his eyes immidiately searching for Sander to find him pouring Lotte some tea.

„What do you wanna drink?“ Jens heard the boy asking, as he joined the others by the table.

„Coffee would be great if possible.“

„Coming right up.“ Robbe replied, as Zoë and him hugged, her hand brushing through his hair, cautiously enough to not rip the birthday hat off.

„Happy birthday.“ She said, pecking a kiss to his cheek: „Let’s get some cake. Milan spend at least four hours in the kitchen, so even if it is horrible, smile.“

He snorted at her shaking his head. He was pretty sure the cake was amazing. Milan had found his absolute passion in baking since the first lockdown in march began. And though his cooking really left a large room for improvment, his baking skills was great by now. At least that’s what Robbe had told him and the last couple of weekends really proved him right.

„My turn finally.“ Milan said and another hug ensued as he was taking into the arms of the older boy and pressed tight against his chest. As with Zoë he was pecked a kiss on his cheek and welcomed with a bright smile and best wishes. Milan’s hand took holf of his and thus they both went to join the group a couple meteres away.

Robbe had joined Sander in the meantime, Lotte placed happily chatting away on the older boys lap, gesturing wildly about, as the other two listened intently. A child really suited them, Jens thought. And if fate was on their side and they pulled through all the mental health bullshit, he was conviced that they should have one. At least Sander appeared to enjoy that role.

Milan sat on the second sofa with Zoë and Senne, the later one busy lightening all the candles on the cake. That leaving Jens to take his seat on the armchair across of them.

„Alright. Make a wish.“ Senne set presenting his accomplished work, as Robbe took out his phone to either film or take a picture with. „And hurry, we want cake.“

It took him three tries to blow every single candle out as the other laughed and cheered him on.

He only whished for his mom to stay a little longer, like the little child he felt he still was.

„What the hell is this?“ Jens asked, his eyes wide open as he regarded the big package that Sander had pulled from his and Robbe’s room. It was a paper brown rectangle and decorated with a comically large red bow, like it belonged into a cartoon. 

Zoë and Senne had gifted him a new year playstation plus membership, that he was very greatful for. And Milan had bought him a quite expensive book on music production, that Jens had wanted and was pretty sure Robbe had told him. 

It was nothing compared to the present he was starring at currently infront of him on the floor, as he, followed by everyone else, had gotten up to inspect it.

„Open it!“ Lotte urged excited to his left, pulling his hand forward.

So he did just that. The bow was off in no time and the packet wasn’t that hard to open either.

He was staring in disbelief directly onto a skate board with a photograoh attached to it by tape, that punched the air out of his lungs. 

It wasn’t just a skate board, it was his skate board, or at least a version of it. Because he had a pretty big accident with it, when he was eleven and the board broke and with it his heart, as it had been his very first one. He had cried the whole way home, more over the board than his broken arm and scratched knees. It took him weeks to get over it.

The photo was showing Robbe and him on his eights’s birthday, smiling at the camera, with said board in his little arms.

„Robbe, you didn’t..“ He heard his own voice saying, just barely keeping from trembling. His hand searching blindly for the boy behind him, who got the hint and kneeled next tim him to take it.

„Well it obviously isn’t the same one, but I found all these photographs of us and our boards last year, going through all my mothers stuff, before she was admitted and I knew immidiately that I needed to keep them. I planned back then to get you a board resembling it for your eighteen’s, but fate has it, that I fell for an artist. So while I told him what to do, and what was acurate, Sander drew and painted everything.“ Robbe explained, leaving Jens to continue starring at it, cautiously picking it up to turn it over and back.

He couldn’t believe it. It looked exactly the same, all the weird scribbles and sketches and amateurish tags were plastered across it. Jens felt the need to place it on a pedestal and conserve it, never touching it. This was too good to be true.

„Dude...“ He managed to say, putting the board back down, before his arms slung around his best friend burying his head in his neck, while the other laughed and stroke his back.

„And you too.“ Jens gestured towards Sander to come down as well, so he could hug both of them. 

„I told you he would love it.“ Robbe was told by his boyfriend, before Lotte tackled them.

„I want to be hugged as well.“ She declared pouting, as they let her into their circle, while Jens was still processing his present. 

The next hours Robbe and him spent reminising in old stories, they told the others about. A lot of emberessing ones, Jens thought, but he didn’t really mind. They really had been through a lot together. Robbe was definitely family and Jens couldn’t be more grateful to have him around. He just really hoped that they would all stay in Antwerp.

While Sander still had two years left at the academy, he had voiced interest to move somewhere else for a couple of years to see more of the world. And Jens was pretty sure that Robbe would stick with him, whereever his boyfriend would plan to take them. Jens really didn’t want to loose Robbe as well.

„You good?“ Robbe’s voice pulled him out of it, as Jens noted that the others had went back to the table, finishing of their second round of cake and tea and other sweets that have managed to appear on the table.

Jens nodded lightly at Robbe next to him on the sofa, as they had watched Senne and Sander help his little sister to stand on the used skate board of Robbe. She tried really hard to keep her balance as the two older boys pshed her back and forth across the living room. 

„You know that if you want to talk, that you can always come to me, yea?“ His best friend said smikring as he winked, a clear reminder of last year, were the roles had been reversed and Jens had tried to have Robbe open up.

„I will.“

„You will what?“ Zoë inquired curiously as she looked up from her phone again, having texted Jana and the girls group some pictures of todays little birthday party, as she had explained earlier.

„Let you know, that even though it was Jens’s big day, we spent two hours on Lucas yesterday on zoom. Because you girls and my boyfriend can’t get enough of him.“ Robbe joked, taking Zoë’s phone to read through the last couple of messages.

„See.“ Robbe said as he showed Jens the screen, a conversation about Lucas being the prime subject: „Tsk, tsk, tsk.“

Jens was pretty close to tell Robbe that he really didn’t mind that at all, and that he probably could happily chat about the boy himself for days on end. And one day he would have to let Robbe know as well. He just couldn’t bring himself to do it yet. It was all too new.

„I’ve heard Lucas?“ Milan chimed in and Jens could only laugh at Robbe’s whine: “Not you as well.“

„Topic change!“ He threfore declared loudly, clapping his hands, to help his best friend out and made everyone look at him instead expectantly.

„What’s happening now with your exhibition? We all were so excited to behave in the dumbest way possible on thursday. Even Noor was in on it.“ Sander smirked at him, a fuck you on his lips, as he mouthed it silently at Jens.

„It’s all gonna be virtuell, like a tour through the exhibition pieces, so I guess maybe we could organise a litte zoom party again to go through it together?“ It is the best I can come up with now, if you are actually interested in seeing it, as you won’t have a possibilty to embarrass me infront of my professors.“

„Uh that sounds still fun. And Jana could join too! Let me just post the group.“ Zoë said excited as she took her phone back from Robbe, who turned his eyes a last time towards Jens. All serious as he patted Jens’s hand on the sofa between them.

„I mean it. I’m here to listen.“ He said smiling slightly and then getting up to help Senne make space on the table. They had ordered a big round of Pizza that should arrive soon for dinner.

Jens loved his best friend. He really did.

„We should add Lucas to the group as well.“ Milan proposed, being met with an unanimous approval of everyone else.

Jens shrugged at Robbe smirking back at him. He had tried at least. He took out his phone himself now, looking at their group that let everyone know about a new number been added. He needed to remind himself to text the poor boy later.

Zoë 17:56: Welcome to the best group in Antwerp!

Amber 17:57: Hello, Lucas!!! Glad to have you here 🥰

Noor 17:57: You still have time to run and block this. Once you are in, they will never let you out. Trust me. 😭

Moyo 17:59: Bring weed pls

[wthzoe]

chapter 7 pt. 1 - you can never be too happy in this life

'you can never be too happy in this life' damn that's it, that's the line

series masterlist - here

previous | next

a/n: wow would u look at that i'm alive lmao. i had so much planned for this chapter that i had to divide it in two. gee i hope no one suspects anything from the title. anyways im sorry for not updating more often 😭 didn't realize how time consuming funerals and emotions were. my laptop is still not working so rip me. posting on tumblr using a phone is a bitch. anyways, enjoy!

taglist(? is this even a list lol): @crayonwriting

-

The following days after the match had been nothing short of amazing. You'd say it's almost better than the day the triplets were born. Almost. Speaking of the triplets' birth, today was their 3rd birthday and the five of you were getting ready to go back to your hometown to celebrate with your grandparents.

Kuroo was nervous. Very much so. He was so nervous that he was quiet the whole drive there. You couldn't understand what he was so worried for, your grandparents loved him. They were so thrilled when you introduced him through a video call one time and your grandmother demanded you bring him home as soon as you can.

Chuckling softly, you reach for Kuroo's thigh. You felt him flinch then relax under your touch. He sighed then grabbed your hand with his before giving your knuckles a kiss.

"Are you nervous?" You playfully asked him to which he rolled his eyes.

"A little bit, yeah."

"A little bit?" You place your hand on his chest, feeling his racing heartbeat. "Yeah, that's only a little bit."

Once again, he rolled his eyes yet said nothing. You arrived at your destination in no time, the traffic being kind to you for once. The triplets excitedly shuffle in their seats at the sight of their old home. Kuroo laughs at their impatience while helping you get them out of their seats.

Your grandparents immediately come out to welcome you and the triplets in, your grandmother peppering all four of you with kisses. Your grandfather notices Kuroo watching you from afar with a warm smile. He reaches an arm out for him, urging him to join in the hug. Kuroo was flustered yet he obliged, awkwardly placing his arms on you and your grandmother's back. Your grandmother smiles at him then pulls him down for a hug and a kiss on the cheek.

"Welcome home, Kuroo." His eyes wells with tears.

"Thanks, ma'am."

You never knew that your heart could feel this much happiness until today. Your grandparents, sons and boyfriend happily bonding together in the living room. You felt so complete that it was almost unbelievable. Then, you remember your parents. The people who deemed you a disgrace when you needed them the most. You could still remember their disappointed looks at you paired with their harmful words.

You didn't notice Kuroo walk up to you, concern evident in his expression. Oh, you didn't notice that you were crying at all.

"Hey, baby, what's wrong?" He whispered as he grabbed your hands and gave them a light squeeze.

"Nothing, really, just... thinking about stuff," you assure him but he didn't seem to believe you. You sigh, "I'll tell you later if it makes you feel better, okay?"

"You better." Engulfed in his embrace, you realize how protected you felt around Kuroo. Like nothing can ever harm you ever again. You hug him back, hoping that you could express your gratitude and love for him that way.

The peaceful moment between the two of you was interrupted when three high pitched 'Papa's and 'Mama's were heard from the living room. Pulling back, you wipe your tears before turning to your three angels.

"Yes, babies?" You reply. They all hault in front of the two of you, each holding what seemed to be paper behind their backs. You glanced at your grandparents who were recording the moment then glanced at Kuroo who had crouched down to the boys' level.

"Ta-da!" They reveal colorful drawings of five stick figures holding hands together. One had scribbles for hair, one wore a skirt while the three in the middle were significantly smaller than the two. Above the drawings were messily written 'I love Mama' while below was 'I love Papa.'

For the second time that day you cried. Even more so when you saw Kuroo pulling all three boys into a hug and giving each a kiss on their foreheads. You joined the group hug, none of you noticing how your grandmother was also crying at the back.

With that, night came. The triplets had to sleep in their old shared crib in your bedroom while you occupy the bed with Kuroo. His arms were wrapped around your waist from behind as you both watch the moon from your window.

"So, can you tell me what you were thinking of earlier?" He whispered with his lips tickling your ears. You felt your heart clench but you did promise him that you'd tell him.

"Have I ever told you about... everything before college?"

"Not really. Are you okay with sharing it with me?"

"Of course I am. You deserve to know, papa." You tease to try lightening the mood. His hug tightened around you as a reassurance that he's willing to listen to you.

"When I was in first year of high school, I had a boyfriend. I don't really want to talk bad about him or point fingers as to how it all happened. We were both in it together but we were not as careful as we should've been. Then I found out I was pregnant. I was scared. Very scared." Your voice shakes as all the feelings you felt came back. Kuroo placed kisses on your nape while his thumb drew circles on the back of your hand.

"A-and then I told him. I really thought he would be there for me, I thought we would go through it with me but instead, he told me that this was not what he wanted and that he wanted to break up," by then you were full on crying. Kuroo's hushes fill your ears as he strokes your hair. "I hated him but at the same time I understood how he felt. We were too young. So, I told my parents hoping that they'd help me because, well, they're my parents. But I never should've expected anything because it broke me even more when they threw me out."

You stopped to stabilize your breathing and to quiet yourself down as the triplets were sleeping. You took a deep breath then continued;

"They said I was a disgrace. Why couldn't I be more like my cousins who were good children. The next day they gave me a choice. They said I could either get rid of 'it' or get out of the house," you take a deep breath once again. All the crying and remembering had your head throbbing but you continue. "I really considered getting an abortion. I can't believe I even thought of that. Thank God I said no. I packed my things before telling them my decision and they were furious. They threw me out the moment I told them."

You turn to Kuroo and bury your face into the crook of his neck. He hugs you tighter than he did before while rubbing comforting circles on your back.

"I was so scared. I had nowhere to go and no idea how to take care of myself and my baby." You sobbed. "Good thing grandma called and I told her everything that happened. Grandpa picked me up in an instant and ever since then they've taken care of me and the triplets. They gave me the strength and guidance that I needed at the time and I couldn't be more thankful."

Kuroo’s eyes had gotten teary when you glanced up at his face. You cup his face with your hands. “Then you came. I didn’t realize that even though I had my grandparents and the triplets I was still incomplete. You complete me, Tetsu. Thank you very much.”

The tears pooling around Kuroo’s eyes rolled down his cheeks and into your hand upon hearing your words. He placed his hand on your cheek and placed his lips into yours. The kiss shared between the two of you spoke the words you wanted to express to each other. I love you, thank you, I treasure you and so on. You pulled back to gaze at his face before placing kisses all over his face.

“I love you.” A kiss on the forehead. “I love you.” On the left cheek. “I love you.” The right cheek. “I love you.” And finally, on the lips.

You stopped and stared into his eyes, both of you sharing a warm gaze.

“I love you, Kuroo Tetsurou. So much.”

“I love you even more, (L/N) (Y/N).”

The five of you came home the next day but not before your grandmother doted on you, again. It felt like the day you moved out all over again but this time Kuroo has to endure it, too. He didn’t find it to be 'ridiculous' as you did. Apparently, his grandmother was like this to him as well when he lived with them, probably even worse.

“Take care of my darling (Y/N), okay? Never leave her side. And make sure to always make my baby boys happy.” Kuroo must have said at least a hundred 'Yes, ma'am's at the span of his conversation with your grandmother. “I leave everything to you.”

“Grandma, it’s not like we’re not going to see each other again, okay? We'll come back as soon as we can.” You say as you gently pulled you grandmother away from your boyfriend.

“You never know, darling.”

“Stop it. We'll come back soon. Love you.” You place a kiss on both her and your grandfather’s cheeks before walking to the car. You wave at them one last time before rolling up the car windows.

While driving Kuroo kept glancing at you from time to time, looking like he has something to say. It didn’t bother you at first but it had become too often. It was dangerous, seeing as he was driving at the moment, so you turn to him.

“Is there something you want to say, love?” He visibly tensed up at your sudden question.

“Well, you see, I've been thinking. Since, um,” He continued rambling for a few more seconds before taking a deep breath and getting right to the point. “Sinceialwayssleepoveranywayandtheboyskeeplookingformewheni’mgonewhydon’twejustmoveintogetherit’snotlikeit’sanydifferentright?”

You look at him confused. What did he say? You couldn’t even catch a word other than 'since.’ He concluded from the look on your face that you didn’t understand him at all so he mustered up the courage to speak again.

“I said, since I always sleep over anyway and the boys keep looking for me when I'm gone, why don't we just move in together?” You continued staring at him in confusion, but this time you were confused about why he was so nervous to ask you that in the first place. It's not like you would say no anyway.

“What were you so nervous about? Of course I'll say yes. I've been thinking about that, too.” Kuroo just wanted to pull you in his lap and give you a tight hug at that moment. Unfortunately for him, he was driving so all he could do was grab your hand and give it a kiss as he keeps his eyes on the road.

[spaceraspberries]

(The first chapter of my 18+ Undertale Fic ‘Monsterous Skeletonus’ is complete!)

(It’s gonna be a -very- slow burn, but there will be a whole lot of the UF Skelebro’s (G included!) in later chapters and a whole lot of eventual smut to go with it, even if the plot is gonna be heavier than a semi as it maps out 👀)

(Once I get it proof read fully I’m going to post it on A03!)

.................

‘Alright, alright! Easy now. We don’t need anyone breaking a leg, do we?’

‘Ugh, why do we need to go -all- the way down here? It’s not like the machinery for this shit doesn’t exist. I feel like a old school miner or something, y’know?’

‘Hey! That’s no way for a brave explorer to talk, Meg! Don’t you want to see what’s down there? Could be all sorts of cool, weird stuff!’

‘Like what? More rocks and dirt?~ Oh! Maybe some ‘sand’ even? Give me a break’

‘Guys, d-don’t start arguing. We’re going to be down here f-for a while so it’s best to get along~’

.................

The varying chatter of excited, muffled voices ringing down into the unknown, inky blackness of what was assumed to be a rather hidden among the weeds and rocks but still wide crevice leading into Mt. Ebott that had been only recently discovered, the forested area had been well scouted out over the past few weeks and had been mapped well so that the current team leading the charge wouldn’t have to contend with trying to figure out where their destination would be by sight alone.

The ‘team’, otherwise known as FTL (Future team leaders. A cheesy name if there had ever been one) were simply a group of third year Geo students who had been tasked with taking core samples from the innermost caverns of Mt. Ebott for substrate testing. It wasn’t exactly a glamorous job by any stretch of the word but it was good experience for the youngsters in terms of field work, the leader of the group of ragtag students, a rather burley, bearded man named Sean and his partner Gunter already being at the bottom of the cavern as they waited for the rest of his team to follow suit, the impatient Sean watching as Meg and Desmond, the third and fourth oldest on the team respectively, carefully sidled their way down the craggy rock surface, arguing all the way much to the usually cheerful but honest mans chagrin.

“The more you guys complain the more time your gonna spend down here getting the damn samples. We still have to set up camp too so I suggest you guys pick up the pace”.

A collective groan coming from the duo grappling down, Desmond and Meg soon reached the bottom of the dimly lit cavern while two other members on the surface still suited up, Terra and Mira, a pair of naive adventurers if there ever were any, looking seriously nervous as they prepared to begin the descent down into the unknown.

“You ready?”, Mira smiling nervously at the freckle faced Terra as her friend nodded back hesitantly, it was more often than not that Mira was the braver one between the both of them, Terra being more of the ‘I’ll just follow you for safety sake’ type ever since they were children and Mira often having had to assume a’leadership’ role because of it.

Not that she minded it at all though! If anything, the short-stack of a girl enjoyed leading her best friend through the forest and hills when they were merely kids, the both of them often fighting imaginary monsters and imagining what it would be like to climb the forbidding and dangerous Mt. Ebott that had the reputation of housing -real- beasts and all sorts of angry spirits for centuries.

Well, according to many a scary bedtime story it did at least, Mira no really longer believing such childish fantasies and thinking them about as real as a monster under the bed. The girl had always been terrified as a kid by the thought of some horrific creature climbing down the mountain and snatching her up in the night when she misbehaved, her being unable to look back at those times without laughing at how her own imagination used to run wild.

“Y-yeah, let’s just take it easy though, alright?”.

Terra blushing nervously as Mira grinned and the both of them began the slow descent down into the inner workings of the massive Mt. Ebott, the dark slag that covered most of the upper surface area soon gave way to crumbly, brown flecks of caked in dirt about halfway down that rained into the depths below at the smallest touch, the bright entrance to the surface growing smaller and yet smaller still as eventually it was merely a pin prick of light far, far above the teams head when Terra and Mira finally hit the weirdly soft and rather squishy ground beneath.

“See? We made it down okay~”, Mira helping to unclip Terra’s equipment as she could tell her fellow team mate was uneasy, she was used to Terra being a bit of a worry wart but she seemed to be especially unnerved today for some reason, “Told ya we would make it in one piece”. Sticking her tongue out playfully at Terra as the girl batted her hand away with a sigh once she was unclipped, Mira laughed as Sean meanwhile approached with bottles of water for both of them.

“Hey now! Looks like you made it all in one piece!~”, Sean smirking broadly as he playfully patted the nervous looking Terra on the back, the girl smiled small as she watched the others in the group already beginning to set their bags down alongside the smooth, stone covered walls of the wide, expansive cavern they had landed in.

The circular area where they stood being lit by a few torches that Gunter, a rather quiet short man that was second in command to Sean had placed around what would be their designated base area, it was easy to tell that whatever this place was it must have been pretty damn old, scraggy bits of moss and thick, thorny vines creeping up the strangely, almost ‘carved’ looking walls that were reminiscent of a oversized well in a way.

The dirt covered ground being rather soft and squishy as was mentioned previously, it wasn’t ‘wet’ but had the texture and feel of a half absorbed sponge that had been wrung out and left to dry, bits of dried plant matter, green and yellow, making up a bulk of the signs of life that had floated down from the surface to the seemingly lifeless cave over the years, a large pile of the shriveled mess having formed a rather neat mound directly below the gleaming entrance far above.

Meanwhile, the lack of hardiness in the soil was proving difficult for Desmond to drive the stakes for his tent into by his annoyed grunts and frustrated strings of cusses.

Nature wasn’t for everyone apparently.

A naturally formed but crooked arch towards the east appearing to lead deeper into whatever lay beyond the teams immediate landing spot, it was oddly convenient, almost as if it was beckoning anyone who fell or grappled their way down here to enter it and take a chance with whatever dangers laid beyond Its dismal, abyss like entryway.

Mira getting a bit of a odd vibe from the area as she decided to stick by her team mates side for now, there would be plenty of time to explore later, her taking a sip from her water bottle with a content sigh as Sean soon formed everyone in a loose huddle to discuss their next plan of action.

“Alright!”, Clapping a hand to get everyones attention as he visually assessed that his team was safe and sound, Sean held his constant, positive outlook proudly even as most of his members looked exhausted from the day trek up Ebott and grappling down here, “Now, we all know why we’re here, collecting samples and all that fun stuff. Of course, to avoid outside contamination from -that-“, Sean pointed upwards at the tiny prick of light to the surface above them, “We are going to have to do a bit of traveling inwards once morning hits!”.

“Oh! Does that mean we get to see how far all this goes?~”, Mira speaking up as she genuinely seemed excited about the possibility of traveling farther into the cave system, she ignored the sound of Meg behind her muttering something annoyed under her breath, “I hear some of these caves can stretch for -miles-!”.

“Andddd your exactly right, kiddo! Of course, we only need to collect samples unspoiled by outside contamination. We won’t need to travel too terrible far in for that, but I wouldn’t discount the idea of another trip down here if funding for this pans out”, Sean winking at Mira as the pint sized girl blushed and internally swooned, a intentional, rough cough from Desmond seemed to break the pair out of whatever little ‘thing’ was blooming between them as he motioned to the tents that still needed to be set up.

“Yeah, uh, a-anyways, another thing guys, I don’t want to see anyone wandering off either, got it? We have no idea where these caverns might lead and the last thing we need is to have to send out a rescue squad to find one of you. I’m sure everyone has heard the horror stories of those idiots who decide to go off alone and wind up wedged under a boulder or something”.

Sighing a bit awkwardly to himself as he seemed to get the hint across to his team judging from the murmurs of acknowledgement they gave, Sean was a natural leader and the head of this group obviously....but sometimes it was a bit difficult to get everyone on the same page, the only real ‘friendship’ between them all outside of being grouped students and cavers being Terra and Mira, two of the youngest mates among them.

This was going to be a long, difficult journey if they couldn’t all manage to find a common ground to communicate on, but at least in the end their mission was likely to prove successful now that they had arrived safely in the interior workings of Ebott as planned with barely a scratch.

Soon enough everyone would be back on the surface and they could all go their separate ways, but for now there was work to be done in terms of getting tents set up and dinner ready, the long hike just to get to the top of Ebott having been almost a full days worth of energy.

“Meg, you get a fire and dinner set up since Desmond already has the tents”, Pulling out a small note paid from his pocket as he scribbled something down while he spoke, Sean than looked at Terra and Mira as his usually eager eyes seemed to grow a bit more tense in thought as he rubbed his temple slowly with his free hand.

“And you two....Just...don’t do anything stupid, okay? We don’t want another Cauldron incident. That -especially- goes for you Mira, got it?”.

“Uh...yeah, y-yes Sir”, Mira blushing and nodding once as she glanced at Terra who now had a chance to smile and nudge her friend back playfully, neither of them particularly were proud of the unspoken ‘Cauldron’ incident but it was good reason for them to stay put and out of the way.

...........................

The team taking the next hour or two to set up tents and unpack gear, the plan was for a three day excursion to take samples from the depths of Ebott for both sediment and groundwater exploration. Of course, no one had really ever been -in- this mysterious cave system until now to map it out, the next few days having the potential to be longer or shorter depending on exactly how difficult the terrain proved to be to navigate.

By the time Meg had managed to scrap together a decent fire and everyone had settled down around it for a meal of rationed leek and potato Soup, the group seemed to be more than happy to simply have the chance to relax and take off their worn jackets and boots, The night sky far, far above them having the faintest sparkle of stars and moon mist to indicate the time of day on the surface.

Mira sitting to the left of Terra and near Sean on a blanket while Gunter sat near Desmond on the ground and Meg had perched herself on her bag, it could have almost be called a crude form of camping in a way if any of the said campers shared any sense of shared camaraderie.

“I’ve always heard weird things about this mountain, y’know? Things like ghosts and goblins and the like”, Desmond sipping his soup as he spoke with a sly grin, the flannel shirted man seemed to enjoy the way he made the nervous Terra especially perk up and shuffle ever so closer to Mira like a lost pup.

“How they especially like to eat little kids that wander away from home....Yeah, I bet they are just waiting to snatch some new prey up when they get a chance~”.

“Real mature, Des. I bet it took you all day to come up with that one, right?”, Meg rolling her blue eyes as the man continues to grin and simply drank his soup, Mira meanwhile seemed to be quite curious about what Desmond was getting at though as she suddenly became a bit more attentive.

“Well...I’m not a kid and neither is Terra, so we should be fine~”, Smiling lightly as she kind of wanted Desmond to continue talking about his little stories of what might be in these mountains, her gaze silently urged him to keep speaking as she let Terra cuddle close to her for warmth.

Desmond chuckling and shaking his head at Mira’s assertion that she wasn’t a child, he closed his eyes for a moment in thought, “ Nah, you don’t wanna hear stuff like that before bed, believe me”.

“B-but, I mean it, I’m really curious about -all- that kind of stuff! Cryptids, ghosts, you name it! I-I mean I don’t -believe- in any of it...it’s just, uh...fascinating I guess”.

“Mmm, I think he might be right, Mira. Besides, we should be hitting the sack soon anyways. Everyone’s got a big day ahead tomorrow”, Sean raising a brow at Mira’s apparent interest in what might be lurking around the inner workings of Ebott, his input seemed to only fuel Mira’s insistence in knowing more about what she thought Desmond was ‘hiding’ from her because he saw her as merely a kid.

“Come on, just -one- story?~ You can’t just lead me on like that”, Mira feeling Terra cuddle a bit closer to her even more so as she seemed to be persistent enough to convince Desmond to give in, the man sighed and put his empty cup down as Mira internally cheered that he seemed he was going to tell them more about his creepy tales.

“Alright alright, but only one, got it? Man, you kids these days know how to work a old mans feelings”.

........................

................

.........

Sleep coming easy for the exhausted group by the time Desmond had sufficiently managed to spook nearly everyone out with his tale of a creature called the ‘Crooked handed woman’, Terra had, as usual, decided to remain by Mira’s side even when they were comfortably safe inside their tents and was cuddled up next to her best friend once the group had decided to call it a night.

It wasn’t as if Mira minded much that the perpetually nervous girl wanted to share a tent, her honestly thriving off the warmth that the both of them being this close gave in this unnaturally cold cavern.

Desmond’s tale still ringing in the back of Mira’s mind as she fell into a mild sleep not long after getting herself comfortable, the thought of some old, crone like hag with skin like old onion paper and a twisted and gnarled hand with a ‘mind of its own’ was enough to keep her up a little after everyone else had fallen asleep, the occasional sound of what Mira assumed was dried leaves shuffling outside her tent instinctively making her cuddle up a bit more in her sleeping bag to feel smaller.

Yeah, maybe it hadn’t been the best idea to beg Desmond to tell his tale after all....

‘T-there isn’t anything out there! Stop being stupid and get your mind off of it already!’

Maybe Desmond was right to not want to tell his creepy stories when what she really needed was to sleep for tomorrows expedition deeper into the cave, Mira sighing a bit to herself as she watched Terra’s soft, unworried, sleeping face next to her own as she slowly tried to lull her body into rest as well.

............

......

-scerch scerch...scritch....~

‘W-what? What is that?’

Mira cracking her groggy eyes open after a minute or so of letting her mind rest, the sound of rustling ‘leaves’ outside of her tent had for a second or two became a bit louder than before, her senses instinctively going on high alert as she waited in silence to see if she wasn’t truly just going crazy from exhaustion.

...............

.........

‘scritch scritch....-c r u u u u n c h-

.............

The sound of what Mira could best describe as one of the Lit-A-Fire portable logs that had been put out by Sean earlier snapping slowly in half, the girls heart was pounding in her chest by now as it was more than obvious that someone, or some t h i n g, was out there just beyond her tent, her wide eyes focusing on the still sleeping Terra in front of her as she debated on waking her friend up to investigate.

‘No, she is just gonna freak out. Just stay put Mira...I-it’s probably just Sean or someone out there....’

............

-c r u n c h-

The sound of another one of the logs seemingly being split in half reaching Mira’s ears as she squeezed her eyes shut and tried not to panic, a odd tapping noise, almost like long nails clicking on stone, was a new sound to emerge after a few seconds of silence, the story she had heard from Desmond earlier returning to her already panicking young mind ten fold.

The old lady with her crooked hand and it’s long, gnarled nails....t-there was no way it was real, right?

............

.......

-tap tap-

A terrified, muffled squeak coming from Mira as she buried her head in her bag, the sound was now right outside of her tent as she felt Terra stir besides her, her not wanting to see who or whatever was attempting to seemingly try to get her attention as the front zipper of the girls shared tent opened rather slow and quietly.

“G-go away!!”.

Mira bolting up and slamming a pillow directly into the face of a most perplexed looking Gunter, the sleepy, heavy set man crunched his brow together as he put his hands up in a mock fashion to show he surrendered.

“Hey there, just calm down!”, Shaking his head once as he tried to speak quietly to avoid waking Terra, Mira blushed heavily out of shame as she immediately seemed to realize how stupid she had been to think that the kindly second in command to Sean had been some kind of ‘monster’.

“Was wonder’in if ya had the first aid in here. Kinda stepped on some of the logs while going to take a leak...and, well...”, Gunter running a hand along his hairline as Mira immediately went to hand off the box of medical supplies to the sleepy looking man that resided safely by the tent entrance, the pink blush she had sprouted didn’t leave her face as she sighed and retrieved her pillow she had thrown at him as well.

“Sorry bout that....”, Speaking quietly as she hugged the parcel to her chest, Mira was merely given a nod by the typically introverted Gunter as he went to zip the tent back up, her and the still sleeping Terra once again being left in the dark, Mira feeling like a total fool for letting Desmond and his stupid story get to her to the point of her actually thinking some terrifying beast had been shuffling about outside.

..............

........

-Scritchhhhhh~

Laying back down to -finally- get some much needed sleep, Mira paid little mind to the sound of what she assumed was Gunter bandaging up his wounded foot, her giving a mighty yawn as she wrapped a arm around Terra and-

..........

-B A N G-

.............

A heavy, extremely loud jolt rocking the pairs tent and apparently the others nearby as she could hear the sound of confused yelling and tired murmurs almost all at once, the startled Terra too blinked her eyes open as she gave a scared, confused look to Mira, her putting a finger to her lip to silently signal to the younger girl to remain quiet as she unzipped and peeked out of the tent to see what the heck was up now.

.......

-B A N G!!!-

A heavy, hot pressure nearly collapsing the heavy canvas tent in on both Terra and Mira as the girls let out a terrified cry of confusion as the fabric fell around them, Mira even under the mess could tell that Sean was shouting indistinguishable words to the others in a apparent panic at whatever was going on, Meg’s just as muffled, frantic pleas mixing in with his orders as Mira tried to yank Terra out from under their collapsed tent as another heavy bang and a sudden, strange whistling noise erupted around them again.

“T-Terra! We need to get out of here!!!”.

Terra, fearful tears streaming down her face as Mira grabbed a hold of her wrist while a bright flash of what could only have been described as a ‘ball of green hued flames’ slammed into the opposing wall nearest where Desmond and Meg’s tent had been, Mira squirmed out from the remnants of tent fabric as she didn’t bother or try to look at whatever or whoever was causing this havoc, her only instinct telling her to run as far away with Terra as she could while she still had the chance.....

Whatever was going on m-must have been some weird, natural cave phenomenon....that was the only real explanation Mira could come up with on the fly e-even if it made little sense logically....

Flames just didn’t shoot out of nowhere like this though.....but maybe since Ebott was rumored to be a long dormant volcano t-that had something to do with all of this?

As little sense as it made it was the -only- logic running through Mira’s imagination as she tried to block out the frantic sound of yelling and screaming back from base, the loud crack of a shotgun being added to the fray as Mira practically dragged Terra towards the archway nearby.

The dimness of the cavern making it nearly impossible for the pair to get their footing as the torches from earlier had been put out by Sean in anticipation of a good nights rest, Mira blindly ran towards the stone archway that led deeper into the yet unexplored inner cavern, her bare feet scrapping painfully along the much rougher, cement-like surface of the pitch black entry way into the unknown depths.

Her nearly crushing Terra’s wrist in her grip as she pulled the hyperventilating and crying girl along, the sound of the carnage from the base camp was now only a muffled, distant drone as the wide eyed and fully shocked Mira eventually stopped to take a breath once they reached a narrow alcove that was eerily silent and still compared to the chaos outside.

“Y-you alright?~”, Whispering softly to Terra as she held her sobbing friend close to her chest, Mira tried to shush Terra but it wasn’t doing much good, the easily terrified girl unable to calm herself as she clung to Mira tightly.

“I want to go -home-, Mira! Coming down h-here was a mistake! I -knew- it was a bad idea and now look what happened! We need to g-go back and help them!!”.

“I know, I wanna go home too....but I don’t think going back there is the best option right now”, Mira trying to give Terra a little smirk to lighten the mood but failing miserably, it didn’t help much at all as Terra simply broke out into a fresh round of sobbing, “We will figure this out, okay?~ I-I’m sure things aren’t as bad as they seem and we probably just over reacted. To be honest I bet this is one of Sean’s stupid pranks”.

“Thats -not- funny and you know that isn’t true!! F-for all we know Sean a-and Desmond and everyone else is hurt back there! I don’t know what happened but whatever a-accident or...-thing- tore up all our tents...but we are going to have to go back and help them!”.

The sound of the distant drone of chaos back from the base slowly growing less urgent as a unnerving silence began to replace it instead, Mira gave Terra a look that said to not even try it, her keeping her grip on her friends wrist as tight as ever.

“Listen...”, Mira taking a hold of Terra’s trembling hand as she tried to be the braver one between them, she sensed that the agitated girl was going to run off the first chance she saw to who knows where and wasn’t going to take the risk of letting that happen.

“Your going to stick with me until we can figure out what’s going on, okay? Going it alone in this place...seems a bit, uh, dangerous...”.

“B-but Mira!-“.

Mira letting out a deep, exhausted sigh as she shuffled Terra to her chest for comfort with the girls protesting, it was partially to avoid letting her see the nervous tears forming in her own eyes, Mira not being cut out to be a leader on the fly like this by any means.

“We need to see if there are any other exits out of here. I know this is scary a-and all, but I know you can do this, Terra~ I know your really brave deep down even if you don’t think it”, Giving her friends hand one last squeeze of determination as Terra seemed to brighten up slightly at Mira’s kind words, the darkness ahead of them seemed to be silently daring the inexperienced pair to take it on, there being no chance of going back now as Mira gave a slight tug of Terra’s arm to prompt her along into the unexplored and potentially hazardous new world, “We are going to get out of here together, I promise”.

Unfortunately for the unwary girls, the journey ahead of them wasn’t going to be easy and the chance of either making it back to the surface at all was slim, a certain green eyed, rather dirty furred ‘beast’ already being well aware of Mira and Terra’s presence~

[sheps-shepherd]

Title: Dizzying Dynamics

Pairing: Mikleo/Sorey; Mikleo & Sorey

Rating: T (for non-graphic mentions of death/dying)

Written for SorMik Week 2020 Day 1: Waxing Crescent - Declaration; Commitment / Rigel - Benevolence; Happiness

*Reposted because Tumblr messed up my formatting so badly I just decided to redo it all.

A/N: This is my first time doing any kind of fandom week in three years so of course all the plans I had for it fell through, hence why this is being posted at the very last minute of the first day. I'm not the happiest with how this came out but it's fluffy and what more can any of us ask for.

All of my works for SorMik Week 2020 will take place in this same AU, which has its own story that I wanted to post before these and still haven't finished. It's a BBC Merlin AU, and all you really need to know is this: magic is banned in this world, Mikleo was born with magic, and Sorey is the sunshine prince we all love and deserve. Other necessary world-building happens within each work itself.

Enjoy!

Read on AO3

---

Mikleo was getting used to life in Camlann. Slowly but surely. 

When his mother had first told him about the arrangements she’d made for him to come live in the capitol, he’d expected to spend a majority of his time with the grandfather he barely remembered in the medical wing of the castle, studying the basics of being a physician by day and honing his magic under the cover of night. He’d expected to spend his days reading, picking herbs, and learning how to properly make various medicines and remedies. Which was okay with him; Mikleo liked to learn, and these types of things were good to learn, and when he went home to Elysia maybe he could put it to use and be more than just the quiet village boy with the magical secret he couldn’t tell anybody.

As it turned out, living in Camlann was nothing like that. Mikleo honestly should have known better, especially when he ended his first week by saving the crown prince’s life and agreeing to take up the mantle as his manservant. 

“Which is a completely glorified title, by the way,” Sorey had told him, on his first official day with his new title, when Sorey had come to get him before he could start worrying about what he was meant to do. “All the things you’re technically supposed to be doing, I’m capable of doing myself. And I don’t mind doing them either. That’s why I always told Arthur I never needed one.”

“What am I supposed to be doing then?” Mikleo had asked, and Sorey had smiled at him like that was the funniest question he’d ever been asked. 

“Stopping wannabe assassins from killing me, apparently,” he’d responded, in a tone that was definitely way too bright and cheerful for the words they’d been paired with. Mikleo had found out right then and there - Sorey Collbrande-Crowe was fearlessly and unapologetically optimistic. 

If Mikleo was being honest, it was rather refreshing to be around someone like that. 

He spent most of his time with Sorey after that first week. When Sorey was in meetings or off wherever his princely duties took him, Mikleo was out doing all the things he originally expected to be doing. The times in between were spent wandering the castle and getting into absolutely everything they could find. 

They spread out maps across the large table in the drawing room. They snuck cooling pies off the windowsills in the kitchens. They read all kinds of things in the library: history books to fables and fairytales to preserved journals. But Mikleo’s favorite times were the nights they holed up in Sorey’s room, with books or treats or stories to share. 

Despite the odd circumstances that got them to this point, they became friends. Genuine friends. The prince-and-technically-servant dynamic didn’t exist. 

But the prince-and-secret-sorcerer one certainly did. To Mikleo, at least. The magic in his blood always seemed harder to ignore whenever he was in Sorey’s presence, a glaring reminder of the impassable space that stretched between them. 

He was lying next to Sorey in the prince’s bed, propped up on pillows with one of the larger history books opened between them, his arm pressed warmly against Sorey’s when the thought hit him - that maybe he was in way too deep, and it had only been a few months. 

Sorey was still the crown prince. Artorius was still his father who hated all things magic. Mikleo had long since given up his avoid the royal family at all costs plan, but falling asleep in the prince’s bed was definitely too far. Risky things like that would put him on the king’s radar, and if Artorius found out- If Sorey found out- 

But we’re already here, Mikleo considered, one afternoon spent watching Sorey scribble away, annotating tomes in the library. This will just be where we stop. No farther. No problems. There was no reason he and Sorey couldn’t be friends; Mikleo just had to tread a little more carefully moving forward. Simple. Even his magic seemed satisfied with that plan, glowing in his chest when Sorey peeked up from his work and smiled at him, and Mikleo smiled back. 

And then the second assassination attempt had happened. And Mikleo had saved Sorey again. And then Sorey had saved Mikleo. And Mikleo spent the days recovering from being poisoned by staring up at his bedroom ceiling and wondering how the hell he ended up here. 

Some destiny this turned out to be. 

“Hello? Anybody home in there?” 

Mikleo blinked his reverie away, turning his head to see Sorey standing there, dressed to the nines in his street clothes, head cocked with a curious look on his face. He beamed when Mikleo focused in on him. 

“There you are! You spaced out on me.” 

“Oh.” Mikleo gave his head a shake, as if clearing the last of the thoughts away. “Sorry about that.” 

“Go somewhere good?” Sorey asked, nudging Mikleo over a step so they were back on the cobblestone road. Mikleo hadn’t even noticed he’d pulled them off. “Or is this a side effect of poison recovery that you didn’t tell me about?” 

“Sorey, I’m fine. Just a little tired. Stop blaming everything on my recovery.” 

“Just checking,” Sorey sang before taking a bite out of his apple - which him grabbing from the kitchen as they left had sparked their usual argument of: “That’s not breakfast.” “It totally counts as breakfast.” 

Sorey was impossible, in the most endearing way. 

“But,” the prince continued after swallowing his bite, “if you are fine, that means you shouldn’t have any problem making good on our deal today. Sure you don’t want to change your answer?” 

Mikleo rolled his eyes. “Are you sure you don’t have anything better to do with your day then talk about poison?” 

“Nope!” Sorey grinned around another crunch of his apple. “Already checked with Arthur. He actually thinks it’s a great idea that I do some research about this kind of stuff.” 

“It is a good idea,” Mikleo agreed. “You were bound to have one sooner or later.” 

“You wound me, Mikleo.” Sorey clutched at his shirt, and Mikleo rolled his eyes again at his dramatics. 

Impossibly endearing. And maybe the slightest bit mortifying, too. 

“I’d guess most people wouldn’t be so excited to research different kinds of poisons,” Mikleo mused as they stepped off the castle road and headed into the Lower Town. They fell in step beside each other, their arms brushing as they walked, assuring they didn’t lose each other in the morning rush of townspeople. “A bit morbid, don’t you think?” 

Sorey shrugged. “Maybe. But I’m not like most people.” He gave Mikleo a cheeky grin. “What’s your excuse, huh?” 

I’m not like most people, either.

“Gramps doesn’t like to leave things half-done,” Mikleo said aloud. “It’s something I need to know as a physician.” 

“But shouldn’t it be something I need to know as the you-know-what? Why isn’t that something Arthur had me studying already?” 

“That’s what physicians are for.” Mikleo was quiet for a moment, then carefully bumped his shoulder against the other’s. “That’s what I’m for. I have to be doing something as your manservant.” 

Sorey chuckled, but the light in his eyes was dimmed as he looked over. “I know,” he said softly, and Mikleo could just barely hear him over the dull roar of people. “But you got hurt because I didn’t know better, and I’m not okay with that.” 

“Sorey, you saved me-“

“You wouldn’t have needed saving if I had known in the first place.” 

“You are not the reason I was poisoned,” Mikleo insisted. “The maid who put the poison in your drink is the reason.” He crossed his arms. “And again, you saved me by going out and getting what Gramps needed to make the antidote. So we’re both still here and we’re both fine. We’re even.” 

“Are not.” Sorey chewed another bite of apple. “We’re two-to-one. Or have you forgotten about saving my life when we first met?” 

Mikleo rolled his eyes again, but couldn’t stop the smile that tugged at the corner of his mouth. “Of course not.” But as far as Mikleo was concerned, that was a debt Sorey had already paid back in full. 

He didn’t admit it out loud, but Sorey must have read something in his expression, because he smiled and gave Mikleo a nudge of his own. 

“Guess we’re just gonna have to keep saving each other and see where we end up, huh?”

“Yeah,” Mikleo murmured. “I guess so.” 

Sorey suddenly wrapped his arm around Mikleo’s shoulders and tugged him into his side. He blinked as he found himself pressed against the prince’s chest, his hand coming up to steady himself so he wouldn’t completely crash into the other. His hand landed at the center of Sorey’s chest, right where he had grasped it a moment ago. 

He tipped his head back, knowing his face was probably bright red but also ready to demand just what Sorey thought he was doing. Then the group of children came hurtling by, practically trampling over one another as they raced down the cobble, calling out hello’s to Sorey as they ran along. 

“Be careful, guys!” Sorey called back. “Watch where you’re going! Don’t run anybody over, I can’t save ‘em all!” 

The children laughed but didn’t show any signs of slowing down. The little boy bringing up the rear of the group bounded past them. 

“I got them, Sorey!” he exclaimed. “Don’t worry!” 

“Thanks, Videl. I’m counting on you.” Sorey tossed his half-eaten apple at the boy, who caught it gleefully. “Say hi to your mom for me, yeah?” 

“Okay! Bye, Sorey!” Videl took a large bite of the apple and turned around to chase after his friends. 

It wasn’t until Sorey was pulling away that Mikleo realized he hadn’t even thought about trying to pull away himself, which he certainly could have done once the crowd of children had passed. The realization made his face grow even warmer. Sorey’s hand staying between his shoulder blades definitely didn’t help.

“You good?” Sorey asked, taking a half-step forward to see Mikleo’s face. “Still have all your toes?” 

“Ah.” Mikleo cleared his throat. “Yes. I’m fine. Thank you.” 

Sorey studied him thoughtfully. The sun was behind him in the sky, silhouetting his messy hair and casting odd shadows across his face, but Mikleo could make out smears of pink across the apples of his cheeks from the heat. He hoped Sorey chalked the redness on his own face up to that, and not to poison recovery or other things. 

The beaming grin that broke out across Sorey’s face surprised him. But really, he shouldn’t have expected otherwise. 

“I believe that evens our score then,” the prince chirped. “Two for you and two for me.” 

“Evens our-?” Mikleo sputtered petulantly. “You did not save my life from a group of children.” 

“And have you ever been bowled over by a bunch of kids on the run before? Because trust me, Mikleo, it is not fun.” 

“Why am I not surprised you got yourself into something like that?” 

“Hey, be nice about it! I had bruises for weeks!” 

They bickered back and forth as they headed down the road again, continuing their walk through the town. There were no more clusters of rambunctious children trying to barrel through them, but Sorey still kept his hand on Mikleo’s upper back, fingers hooked comfortably around his shoulder. And Mikleo let him, telling himself it was because their playful banter was distracting him and nothing more. The magic fizzling beneath his skin made sure to let him know he wasn’t fooling anyone. 

Living in Camlann was absolutely nothing like Mikleo had expected it to be. 

But he was in way too deep to do anything about it now, so he might as well enjoy it. 

[fmdjaewonarchive]

► agree.

date(s): july 2020 - february 2021 mentions of: champion members, unity members (samsoo, yul & sunghee mentioned by name but like... blink and you’ll miss it)  word count: +/- 2.3k words (870w lyrics/660 words composition/740 words production) warnings: mentions of anxiety, panic attacks and car accidents details: full lyrics and full composition verification for agree, 3/3 verifications for jaewon’s upcoming album escapism. jaewon doesn’t only know how to write sad boi music, he also writes angry boi music, the only two emotions he’s ever experienced rlly. (a/n: i lost my braincells within the first 100 words and still haven’t retrieved them, read at your own discretion)

the song is born out of frustration, anger blocking up his throat to the point it feels hard to breathe.

it’s the kick-off point of champion’s world tour, a concept that has jaewon disgruntled enough as it is, snatching him away from unity and dropping him in the states like he is supposed to care about this group, like he doesn’t have better things to worry about.

but alas that’s beside his point, as much as he detests the idea behind champion, it’s not his main source of frustration.

traveling out to the states, that part is hell. now jaewon has never been a huge fan of traveling, suffering from a crippling fear of flying ever since predebut that somehow has not gotten any less severe with the sheer amount of flying all over the place unity has been doing. jaewon also absolutely hates airports, they’re too crowded, too hectic and far too stressful to not immediately put him in a godawful mood.

the cameras shoved right into his face both prior to departure and directly after arrival definitely didn't help.

comparatively, champion’s trip to the states this time hadn’t been that bad. jaewon just happens to be in an extra foul mood today but rationally, he has to admit that he’s seen far worse throughout the years.

but maybe that’s exactly the problem, how common these things have become, that getting pushed and pulled at while trying to get on flight was considered to be mild.

jaewon’s frustration isn’t solely aimed at an isolated instance, it’s at the ridiculous standard that’s been set for idols, the things they have to accept like they are normal.

normally he would call soo to complain about whatever was bothering him but with the time difference, jaewon knew his boyfriend was ought to be asleep at this hour and he definitely wasn’t waking him up for something this minor.

he even humors the thought of perhaps finding sunghee or yul to complain to but with most of champion out for the night doing whatever (admittedly, jaewon didn’t listen when they were making plans, he wasn’t gonna tag along anyway) that isn’t really in the cards either. perhaps that’s for the best, jaewon isn’t the biggest fan of actually talking to the younger unity members about what was on his mind.

either way, jaewon is stuck in a hotelroom by himself, no one around to really vent his frustration too so instead, he might just as well write it all down.

and that’s exactly what he does, settling down at the desk in his hotelroom, scribbling on a notepad randomly found laying around.

on the plane the person in the seat next to me that’s not my fan apparently buying info off the airplane company

it’s not entirely relevant to what happened at the airport earlier but jaewon feels angry all over just thinking about it. unity has had it’s fair share of experiences with saesangs, seemingly only increasing the more popular they keep getting. sure, that makes sense but it doesn’t mean it’s okay, contrary to what dimensions seem to believe with how easily the company brushes it off under the pretense of it just being another part of the job.

at the airplane lounge there’s a war between the 200 mm guns privacy, panic disorder, they barter with one another...

in the first place, jaewon’s main concern is unity, it always is. he’s willing to put up with a lot if it means the younger members are left off the hook. but he has to admit, since the panic attacks have started to become more prevalent, it’s a lot harder to take that stance. it’s hard to take care of others when he fails to take care of himself.

jaewon tries not to think about what that means for his position as a leader.

from early morning put on a mask and fight on in short, call it being a puppet...

jaewon knows he’s not an ideal idol, he’s never been and he never will be. maybe in retrospect, he would have done things differently but there is no use in considering those what-ifs now. there is, however, no denying that all of it is just a bigger struggle with him, it will never go as easily as with people who were made to stand in front of the camera’s. why shouldn’t he get to be open and honest about that? he’s not the perfect idol they want him to be, he will never fit that mold.

i know, that’s right that’s right that’s right that’s right that’s right that’s right i know that’s right that’s right that’s right

written out, the chorus feels a bit silly, but jaewon feels justified in his creative choices. not that the song is ever going to be used for anything, it’s just an attest to his frustration. jaewon knows he’s ought to sit down and silently accept whatever is expected of him.

it’s been years since he’s been his own person. these days, he’s dimensions’ property first and that of the general public second, there is no use in fighting that, no space for his voice.

so sure, whatever, he agrees, what else can he do?

---------------

jaewon forgets about the lyrics he’s written down after that.

in the moment there had been no intention to turn them into a full-fledged song, a haphazard combination of lyrics that in their raw form, probably held very little meaning, too much filler between the few parts that he did properly think through.

so jaewon forgets all about it before he even sets foot back in korea again. unity is busy enough, the release of neo zone lurking around the corner and with multiple schedules of his own, jaewon can’t even think about the song if he wants to.

it only comes drifting back into his consciousness at least a month of two having passed since champion’s american tour dates.

the day in itself isn’t anything special, if there is anything remarkable about it it’s the fact jaewon isn’t working for once. he’s just hanging around his and samsoo’s apartment, scrolling through whatever app on his phone keeps his attention for long enough.

until an article pops up.

it’s a news post about a rookie group he’s never heard of from a company he doesn’t know the name of, it has nothing to do with him, but he finds himself reading through it anyway. apparently, they got into an accident on their way home from schedules as they were being followed by saesangs. no one got injured and truly, it’s not the first time jaewon has read news like this but it does fill him with the same sense of anger as what he had experienced that first day in the states with champion.

because this type of news shouldn’t be common, for how long are people gonna pretend it is?

maybe he should finish that damn song.

wait does he even still have the lyrics?

jaewon vaguely remembers at the very least putting the sheet of paper in his backpack after the concert as he had been packing up to move to the next city of their tour but after that, he can’t say he recalls having seen it lay around.

he’s really ought to get more orderly with his drafts.

luckily for him, jaewon does find the sheet of paper, not in his bag but shoved in between the pages of a notebook and with the draft of his lyrics obtained he makes a beeline for his home studio. normally he’d do this stuff at the company headquarters but truly, that sounds like far too much work in the moment.

obviously, the song is meant to have an angry undertone to it, supposed to convey the same anger and frustration that swallowed jaewon whole as he had written the lyrics.

the deep, resonating boom of low brass sounds for the opening of the song are a no brainer, the sound gives a bombastic, ominous vibe, immediately setting the song off on the right note. it’s supposed to sound grande and honestly a little bit intimidating, a dark feeling creeping around the corners.

of course, the sound is far too theatrical to be underlaying to the entire song so jaewon alternates it with a deep, booming bassline, the brass only reappearing right before the chorus other than in the opening section as if to give off a warning. to fill up the verses and the parts in between, jaewon adds rumbling, deep drums in the background, making them feel less empty.

what really makes the song however is the rapidly-cycling electronic stuttering a rhythmic pattern across almost all parts of the song. it feels a little distracting at first before jaewon decides that really, that’s exactly what he’s going for. the melody feels just a little too fast, uncomfortably so and in a song reflecting so much stress and strain, that only feels fair, reflectives of the way his chest tightens up when he can’t breathe, when his hands tremble and his heart beats so fast it might as well make him sick.

jaewon thinks it conveys his frustrations pretty damn well.

---------------

it doesn’t seem in the books for the song to ever be released until the process of selecting songs for escapism comes along. while jaewon regains some of his creative freedom, most of it had been under dimensions terms, leaving it up to them to shape the album in a way they prefer over his creative vision.

until somewhere near the end of completing the track list, the head producer asks jaewon if he has any songs laying around that could fit in with the rest of the album.

‘agree’ is the first thing to come to mind.

the head producer seems to like the songs, enough to approve it at least and jaewon can’t help but feel a flare of pride. the producer seems intent on leaving the creative process in his hands, letting him handle the production.

it makes ‘agree’ the first song ever that’s entirely his own that he gets to release, it feels like a milestone to jaewon.

he does get a little list of suggestions, mainly pertaining to the lyrics. the producer leaves a few remarks here and there about where lines could be stronger, what he would do differently but all of it are very loose recommendations, jaewon isn’t actually under an obligation to do anything with them.

in the end, he does anyway, shuffles some lyrics around, dares to be a bit more assertive in his wording, right onto the border of what he would consider too gloat-y for himself. but the producer is right, it gets to pack a punch, it gets to be a little bit self-important. somehow having the external confirmation makes it easier to write those lyrics without feeling like a fraud. it’s still his, his writing, his song.

with the last tweaks done they’re quick to get to recording. they’re still on a time crunch as jaewon’s manager reminds him (jaewon likes the man well enough but dear lord would he never let him forget). it's one of the last songs on the album to be recorded after all and at this point, they are cutting it close.

with everything else he needs done, all jaewon has left to do is fine tune the song, the last tweaks and sounds to be added like missing puzzle pieces now he has the bigger picture pretty much laid out in front of him, polishing and detailing it to elevate the song worth of something to be released on an album.

the instrumental is already pretty hectic, fully intentional of course, but with a proper, clear recording it’s easier to spot the empty gaps, spaces to add the last finishing touches. he adds more brass, less grande and dramatic than the ones in the pre-chorus, curling around the edges of the chorus to round them up neatly and as if to scale down again for the verses, still fast paced but somewhat a breath of fresh air between one chorus and the other.

he delays the part at the opening before the brass and bass kick in, a silence before the storm feels even if the hyperactive stuttering beat is already there, he considers taking that out at first too but the point kind of is that it is more or less omnipresent, it’s always there even when there is nothing else much, like the anxiety that feels permanently stuck to his head.

there is also the addition of an extra melodic line, lingering behind that main, slightly headache inducing electronic synth. it doesn’t really stand out, especially not compared to it’s main competitor but it does remain prevalent in the few parts the main instrumental motif is nowhere to be found, giving it small moments to shine. it serves a clear function, or to jaewon listening ear at least (maybe he’s overanalyzing at this point). the little bounces of the electronic beat all over the place keep up the pace of the song, making sure its explosive nature prevails over the dark dreary undertones of the bassline and brass sections, giving it an overall dynamic feel.

it takes some fiddling, jaewon pulls something close to an all-nighter to finish up the song with the sheer amount of detail he ends up focussing on but by the time he sends it in, he has a good feeling about it at least.

when he presents the final product to the head producer, there are no more suggestions. it’s good, and it’s all his own work.

[currentfandomkick]

Bio! Dad Strange part 4

Shorter but a paris update for her life and a little on gotham with Jason as Robin while Tim is a hero Stalker.

Marinette is 7 when she changes schools, ordered into the Dupont school chain by her teachers since she was getting ‘difficult’ and contradicting their ciriculum. When they challeneged her on this, she went to the school board with Rolland beside her of all people.

The board agreed on one thing, Marinette’s contradictions were not only factually correct, but were done to prevent the outdated ciriculum from hurting her classmates. Instead of punishing her, she got to skip a gade and was given to Dupont as a ‘highly reccomended gifted student’.

Her first day she met Max, who also skipped a grade. The pair bond in five seconds over a new programming focused on learning emotional intelligence. Uncle Riddler was showing her it, and Max got his hands on a various ai bases. This led to then teaming up and designing the one and only Markov together, if only in schematics.

A week in and the two notice that some kids are being followed around by a guy with a bat. They report it. Again and again, but no one can find him.

One day he catches the pair on their way to Max’s—they wanted to work on their ai together, ok? The guy tries to hit Max, saying something about them being lucky metas that needed to suffer.

Marinette’s gotham training kicked in. She caught the bat, ripped it away from him and hit him in the chest with it, while yelling at max to run.

At the end of the incident, videotaped by a bystander, the Dupont Stalker was arrested.

Marinette was given another name by the police, ‘fille de batte’ or bat girl. Her having family in gotham only made the nickname more popular.

This put her on Kim and Alix’s radar. Kim wanted a challenge for fighting and competitions, and this tiny kid did that—to an adult! New friend and rival!

Alix was went from shock to joy as Marientte does art. She does art. Art friend to rant to found!

Nino ran into Marinette not long after Kim and Alix attached themselves to her and Max. Nino became their judge for Kim challenges. Including Mari pinning Kim to the mat, or deciding who did a circus move better (Mari won acrobatics).

Chloe doesnt go to dupont until next year, and sabrina is in another class, mildly concerned for Marinette.

In this au, again, Dupont is considered a ‘i would not be shocked if there were metas there’ school for gifted kids in any way.

Marinette is sent there for her insane science obsession at the time, but is also put in their arts program with Alix to develop as an artist with her medium, fabrics and fashion.

And if marinette redesigns hero outfits as “monsiuer ross, scribbles have more style, let alone fashion sense” alot, well. Kids get obsessed a lot and the Justice League is a common one, as are known villians. Her everyday outfits having different hero schemes—oddly enough some forensic scientist she’s obsessed with from some american city ended up in her mix—well. She’s a kid and showing signs a few types of anxiety.

Possible social and OCD and a developing case of perfectionism common to the arts program. The school has her see a therapist and know she isnt telling them everything beyong mild concern for her gotham family, and confusion over people just ‘not getting things’ as she is terribly smart and good at finding patterns and how do people not see it?

By the end of the year Marinette is in a strong friend group who’s parents and hers have decided to have joint custody during the school year.

She was now (forced) to learn vietnamese from Kim’s Grandparents, italian from Rolland (her nonno that has a Thing for tradition and somehow married Gina and raised Tom mostly on his own while running the bakery to boot), english from Father/Strange, Mandarin from her Maman and she started Arabic to talk with Nino’s aunt who kept saying marinette was her future in-law and point out that nino and her are friends, not dating ma’am.

However, Nino endured most of this with her-not the italian or Mandarin, but the others. Kim couldnt get Arabic but mandarin was a breeze for him. Alix cannot get vietnamese or arabic but Mandarin is her jam after french. Max just speaks french and english, he understands the others he just cant get the sounds right, ok?

When Marinette goes back to Gotham that summer, she ends up dealing with Hero Stalker Tim (jason is robin now) while looking for Red Hoodie who No oNE is telling her what happened and she’s worried, ok?

Tim feeds her obbsession with fixing problems. He sometimes sends her building layouts of places Catwoman stole from. And then the jewlry reappears thanks to a nervous Marinette coached by Rose and Ghoul while Frost handles her post-fix it freak out. Tim also may or may not get helped by her alot during Batman Stalking Time as she teaches his butt how to sneak and complains he’s worse than penguin.

Tim hates that, works on it, and still has nonidea who she is. He does admit to figuring out who batman may be, but needs more evidence so...

Marinette hits him becuase “thats dangerous!” And tries to lecture him in identites.

Batman’s radiowave was used for said lecture.

“And it puts their families in danger you, uh, hero stalker! And stuff so no more identity investigations!”

“They have the same builds, and did signsture moves from—“ the signal cutout.

He and Jason are more careful... ish. They change channels and monitor the old one.

Sometimes Batman catches Marinette and Tim talking about coldcases and she has asked three times if he heard anything about Jason’s street kid identity. Jason is feeling guilty about this as she’s his Pixie Pop. This lets Bruce know that the probably-clark’s-kid would keep Jason away from GCPD and CPS.

When a convo leads to Batman finding out Tim and Marinette have considered asking the police for help with a case of medicine that needed to be recalled as it was beign used to mule drugs contaminated the batches and hurt patients, but turned it down after she saw some taking bribes from Fish, Batman lets Gordon know and an investigation is launched.

While Bats is away, Jason visits marinette as Robin and tries to get her to bats for more information and a lecture on heroing without adult supervision. Maybe.

Only she’s currently stealing from a sleeping selina at another HQ. A Selina who has stopped trying to stop marinette and let riddler turn her house into one of his ‘traps’ to stop Marinette’s ‘return theiving’.

Jason gets stuck in a trap. Marinette is gone by then, scared Robin will tell Superman about her and he’ll hurt her family or something.

Catwoman is annoyed at Marinette’s sucess. She goes to stop the girl after leaving him tied up for Batman with a message: leave her new kitten-to-be alone.

Follow up talk post-Caught Marinette reverse theiving.

“Blame the Council’s decrees. She’s their little princess, and my new neice,” Catwoman watched Batman carefully.

Confused Batman in interrogator mode. “You mean the Court of Owls, arent they disbanded?”

“Bats, the council is gotham’s underground. Apparently Two-Face made the contracts as penance for scaring the Princess during a breakout. Unless you want an organized attack by the council, steer clear of her.”

Batman conencts the dots and curses himself. The girl he was looking for last summer is the Princess of Gotham’s underground. It will be hell finding her. And Superman/Clark will lose it when he’s told.

He lets the JL know about it, saying ‘possibly kyptonian clone, female child. Gotham’s underground is calling her their Princess. Connor and Kidflash tailed her last summer during the arkham breakout while Robin was with the Titans. Be alert for a small asian girl.’

That was how Marinette ended up on the JL watch list and how Superman had another existential crisis.

Dick freaks out with the Titans over this. Becuase kyltonian raised by villians is terrifying. Jason forwarded the message and adds on “she’s a good kid and wants to help. Somehow keeps zsasz and joker from killing people, so its not good to take her away or issolate her from the villians if you find her. From what i remember, she is terrified of her family beign put in danger. The others wont listen to me. If you can, pass this along to the other sidekicks and your allies—none of them trust me enough to listen. I cant talk to her as a civilian like i used to either for obvious reasons. And she’s terrified of me-Robin. Maybe you can get through to her, or someone else can. Just talk to her first, she’s more reasonsble than she looks”

Dick doesnt read the add on until much later and regrets it.

He met marinette once. She was a very excited kid babbling about aerodynamics in acrobatics and asking about that. Not hero things, not power things, or justice league but That.

He tried to be nice but he was having a horrible mission, saw the girl floating as she rambled and tried to grab her.

She freaked out and bolted, sort of. He got slammed into a building, or would have had she not caught him, rambled in french while trying to apologize (he was a but stunned from the throw, and rebooting as villian-kyptonian was... nice?) and put him on the roof, hit his communicator and said one thing.

“I think i broke your robin? All are robins like bird bones or something?”

He regained a functioning brain as that. That was something he could respond to.

“I am human thank you!”

That seemed to be enough for her as he moved to get up. She waved bye and bolted, something about Rose being mad at her for being late...

“Titans. I think we might have been wrong about the kid...”

Later with Young Justice the info was passed on.

Jason asked if anyone read his attachment and was met with silence. He groaned and told them “so another team she’s going to avoid... great.”

Marinette added the titans to her list of ‘people to aviod—tetch and Jerimah were the worst. Luthor and Cadmus were under them. Then the entire Justice League (they would tell batman or superman. Snitches.), followed by GCPD, CPS, the Bat Family and now Titans. She wonders if she needs to add anyone else, and hates that she cant talk to heroes. They could help with controlling her powers instead of suppressing them but she cant trust them not to give her to superman like batman did with Rose to Poison Ivy and she’s pretty sure Superboy too.

Next time, times marinette accidently put together identities and curses Hero Stalker Tim for her now knowing.

[hillerskas]

No Longing for the Moonlight (2.6k)

Their fingers overlap as they both grip the edge of the bucket and maybe Eliott squeezes a bit harder than necessary. Maybe Lucas squeezes back, too.

(ao3)

It starts with a round of shots that taste like nail polish remover.

‘How do you even know what that tastes like?’ Idriss coughs, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. The toilet paper wrapped around it wilts and he curses to himself.

Eliott shrugs and downs his second vodka, wincing as the alcohol stings his chapped lips. A dribble escapes down his chin, taking a strip of makeup with it. ‘Educated guess.’

Idriss closes his eyes briefly, gearing up for the third attack. Another round of clinking shot glasses and burning throats.

‘You guys are idiots,’ Sofiane murmurs, scrolling through his specially curated Halloween playlist.

‘You say that now, but I know for a fact all of the strong stuff’s gonna be gone by the time we get there.’ He sends a pointed glare over to Eliott. ‘Maybe we wouldn’t have to drink like we’re first years if someone had got ready in time.’

Eliott- a little wobbly on his feet now- raises his hands in innocence, ‘Hey… worth it.’

‘He’s right; he does look dead,’ Sofiane comments with a grin as Monster Mash begins to blare tinnily from his phone speaker.

‘DJ, I have a request,’ Idriss says, gesturing vaguely in the direction of the phone.

‘Nope,’ Sofiane dismisses, stumbling towards Idriss with a pretty accurate zombie impression. The costume doesn’t hurt either. Eliott chuckles at Idriss’ comically unsettled expression and then decides to pour out more shots.

‘Eliott, please don’t be too wasted for your first kiss with Lucas,’ Sofiane warns, giving up on his pursuit of Idriss.

‘Sofiane, please don’t be so obsessed with mothering me that you miss your first kiss with Imane,’ he bats back. It has the desired effect; a bright blush and a loud, familiar laugh.

‘Seriously, though, man… the tension,’ Idriss leans over the kitchen island to poke at Eliott’s ribs. ‘I can feel it in your bones, he’s gonna kiss you tonight.’

‘What do you- oh,’ Eliott cuts himself off. He snickers and pinches the bridge of his nose. ‘How many skeleton jokes have you been saving up?’

‘You didn’t give me much time to prepare, but I’d say about thirty six.’

‘That’s weirdly specific, should I keep a tally to make sure?’ says Sofiane.

Idriss places a hand on his shoulder. ‘You’re gonna be the only one sober enough, so I vote yes.’

‘Speaking of sober.’ Eliott offers a final shot to the other boy who simply groans and grudgingly clinks his glass against Eliott’s before necking it.

***

The bitter autumn breeze turns out to be a lot more sobering than Eliott would have liked, but he’s still moderately tipsy by the time they reach Emma’s house.

Idriss- who’s already lost half of his costume to the wind and looks more ‘victim of an unfortunate bullying incident’ than ‘preserved Pharaoh’ at this point- taps the Enter at your own risk sign on the door in drunken amusement before twisting the handle and barreling inside.

Immediately, they’re consumed by the heat of the hallway and a too-loud Halloween mix, but it causes something like anticipation to sit in Eliott’s bones. He buzzes with it.

‘Boys, you’re just in time!’ Daphné calls, materialising in the living room doorway. They share a curious glance amongst themselves before making their way over to her.

‘In time for what?’

She grabs hold of Eliott’s wrist once he’s close enough and drags him over to a circle of familiar faces. The room’s a lot less crowded than he expected, but he can hear distant cheers from the other side of the house.

His friends immediately find their place next to Imane, Alexia and Arthur, leaving Eliott to bear the brunt of Daphné’s specific brand of excited energy.

‘We’re about to start an apple bobbing competition!’ she explains. And, yeah, now Eliott spots the makeshift cauldron in the middle of the room, filled with a mixture of apples toffee and otherwise.

And then there’s Lucas, slightly obscured and leaning against Yann on the outskirts of the circle. They find each other, though. They always find each other. Because they’ve been balancing on a possibility for a while now.

Eliott doesn’t miss the casual once-over Lucas gives to his costume and he repays the favour instantly.

He’s in all white, and it suits him, suits him so much Eliott aches to tell him. Even his hair’s dusted with glow-in-the-dark dye, blue eyes rimmed with smudged eyeliner, and they pop, beg Eliott to come over, to tap his fingertips gently across the stars on his cheeks.

Eliott swallows instead and accepts the beer Emma places in his hand.

Lucas pats Yann’s shoulder, tips his head and then properly joins the group. Half of his beer’s already gone.

‘Okay, so everyone just write down your names,’ Daphné says, beaming as she hands everyone in the circle a neon orange post-it note. Eliott eyes Sofiane and Idriss suspiciously as they whisper into a couple of the girls’ ears before focusing on writing his own name down, folding it up, and placing it in the plastic skull Daphné’s using as a bowl. She practically skips around the room collecting everyone else’s papers, narrowly avoiding getting trapped in conversation with an already drunk Basile. The other half of Eliott’s beer disappears around about the same time he gets lost in the glitter decorating Lucas’ hair.

‘Eliott and… Lucas!’

That snaps him out of it. ‘Huh?’

Daphné glances around the room awkwardly and then holds up the paper. His name sits boldly in the centre, looking strangely unfamiliar.

‘You’re up first.’

Lucas is already positioned opposite, slender fingers drumming against the side of the cauldron and lips pulled into a grin. Eliott gulps, darts his eyes over to a too content looking Idriss and Sofiane, places his empty bottle on the mantelpiece behind him, and inches forward.

‘First one to get an apple and drop it in here-’ she gestures to a pumpkin-shaped pot, ‘-wins! No hands, though.’

‘Sounds easy,’ Lucas says, staring right at Eliott.

‘It’s on, Lallemant,’ he manages to reply.

The water’s way too cold when they dip their faces in, and Eliott idly wonders if he went for the waterproof makeup in the end. He bets he didn’t.

Their fingers overlap as they both grip the edge of the bucket and maybe Eliott squeezes a bit harder than necessary. Maybe Lucas squeezes back, too.

Their gazes lock as their mouths search for purchase, apples and lips glistening, teeth grazing slick skin and watered down face paints. Eliott’s cheek skims against Lucas’ and it’s teasing, tender, then razor sharp as he sinks into an apple. He really wishes he could make this dance last longer but he’s gasping for breath.

Then again, he thinks maybe he really is drowning as Lucas brushes a kiss against his cheekbone just as he comes up for air.

Eliott’s on the verge of panting when he drops the apple in the pumpkin bowl, eyes feral as Lucas whips his hair back and smudges paint into his skin where he wipes at his mouth.

‘Ahh! You won!’ Daphné squeals, clapping her hands together before throwing a candy necklace over his head. Eliott shakes himself out of his Lucas-study, not failing to catch the smirk in the corner of the other boy’s mouth. He so knows what he’s doing.

‘Let’s see who’s next.’

It’s effortless when Lucas strolls over to him, stands beside him with a white hand hovering barely a millimeter away from his own. He feels like he’s burning at the mere suggestion of his touch.

‘Uh… Eliott... again… playing against- okay, Eliott, how many times did you put your name in the bowl?’

Eliott frowns and flicks his gaze instinctively towards Lucas. ‘Once, I swear.’

He’s biting his bottom lip to hold in a laugh. Eliott follows his eyeline and spots Idriss and Sofiane, arms slung over each others’ shoulders and grinning way too smugly.

Ah. There it is.

Daphné sighs and empties the contents of the skull directly onto the floor, a cascade of black and orange Eliott and Lucas scribbles. Eliott reaches into his back pocket for his tobacco and wiggles it in a silent question. Lucas squints at him for a moment before smiling softly and nodding. It’s somewhat of a tradition for them to sneak away at every party, but it never happens this early. Maybe he’s finally ready to stop toeing the line.

They weave their way through the house to the tune of Ghost Town and Daphné’s chagrined pleas for someone to just tell her where she put her damn post-it notes.

When they reach the kitchen, Eliott grabs them both another beer. They’re warm and dripping with long since melted ice, but Lucas accepts it like it’s the most romantic gift Eliott could have ever bestowed upon him.

The romance shatters as soon as Eliott opens the back door and practically jumps to another continent, the door having somehow gained the ability to speak in screams.

‘What the fuck?!’

Lucas barely keeps himself from falling to the ground howling as Eliott’s heart hammers in his chest.

‘Stop,’ Eliott groans, though his heart’s now switched from a reaction of terror to slightly love-struck levels of speeding.

When Lucas eventually recovers, he lifts a shoulder and then points at the motion sensor tucked neatly against the doorjamb. ‘Emma loves Halloween.’

‘Emma’s paying for my tombstone,’ he breathes.

Thankfully, they make it into the yard without further incident. It’s oddly calm considering the growing chaos inside, bathed in moonlight and orange from the bulbs spread among the trees.

Lucas’ fingertips flirt with the back of his hand as they walk through the rose bushes and weeds, finding a spot up against the garden wall. There it is again, the buzz under his skin just waiting to ripple outwards.

‘So…’ Lucas starts. Eliott smiles as he plants his beer bottle next to his feet and begins rolling a cigarette. ‘A mummy, a zombie, and a skeleton walk into a high school party…’

He’s not proud, but he lets out what could be considered a snort and half of the tobacco falls out of his paper to be lost in the grass.

‘What happens next?’

Lucas hums and fiddles with the hem of his shirt. ‘...It’s not funny.’

Eliott narrows his eyes and darts his tongue out to lick the paper, watching Lucas’ gaze drop to his mouth. ‘Why not?’

‘Because I didn’t think of a punchline.’

Eliott titters and lights his cigarette, drawing in smoke. ‘I’m disappointed, Lucas.’

‘Sorry. I can at least tell you what happens to the skeleton, though.’

‘Hm, what?’

‘He gets a boner.’

Suddenly, there’s no air in Eliott’s lungs until there’s too much and he’s hacking up half of his insides. Lucas, fucking Lucas, just casually leans back against the garden wall and observes Eliott’s slow and painful death with merely a quirk of an eyebrow and a satisfied smirk.

‘That was terrible,’ Eliott forces out once he’s recovered.

Lucas laughs and it’s beautiful. Eliott lets it settle in his ears and commits it to memory like every other one before it.

‘What are you dressed up as, anyway?’ Eliott asks as he fumbles to relight his cigarette. The white face paint could point to a ghost, but the scattering of stardust across his cheeks suggests otherwise.

Lucas rolls his bottom lip between his teeth and shrugs. ‘The moon.’

And Eliott thinks perfect, perfect, perfect, he’s perfect.

‘I once married the moon.’

‘What?’ Lucas asks through another laugh.

He beams and nods, sucking on his filter. ‘Why are you so shocked? Didn’t you ever have one of those fake weddings behind the bike shelters when you were little?’

Lucas’ brow wrinkles. ‘Well, yeah, but I…’

Eliott raises an eyebrow, waiting. He can feel the cheap face paint crack with the movement. Lucas shakes his head, blush peeking out from his own thin layer of paint.

‘Nope; I’d rather you stay looking like the weird kid, here. You married the fucking moon.’

Eliott almost chokes again on his cigarette smoke. ‘Yes, I married the fucking moon. C’mon, why were you weird?’

Lucas groans and covers his face with his hands. The visible patches of bare fingertips look red from the cold as he mumbles into them. Eliott grins and tips his head forward, squinting as if that would help his ears hear better.

‘Sorry, what was that?’

Lucas heaves a sigh and rests his head back against the wall. His eyes almost glow in the orange light from one of the pumpkin lanterns strung up in the trees above. It casts a beautiful hue across the white UV dye in his hair and Eliott’s mesmerised all over again.

‘I said I was the organ player.’

And Eliott fully chokes this time. ‘You were the what?’

Lucas chuckles and rolls his eyes before plucking the cigarette from Eliott’s fingers and placing it between his own lips. His voice comes out husky. ‘I didn’t want to marry any of the girls, so.’ He shrugs again with a huff of smoke. ‘I figured every wedding needed an organ player,’ he giggles, head tilted.

Eliott can’t quite believe he’s real. ‘Well, I would have loved for you to have played the air organ at my wedding.’

‘It could still happen,’ Lucas murmurs, irises glinting in the low-light. Eliott’s pretty sure he can physically feel his pupils dilate as Lucas lets the last of the vapor trail from his mouth. He barely has time to blink before Lucas is dropping the cigarette, pushing himself off the wall and crowding his space. A gentle tug at the candy chain around his neck and then Lucas is asking, ‘Can I have one?’

Eliott’s certain his soul leaves his body as Lucas places the necklace between his teeth and bites down. He flinches, eyes trained on Lucas’ lips, as the candy snaps and the string drops and thumps back against his chest. Inside the house, the song changes, a heavy bass fit to rattle the windowpanes but he’s barely aware of it. It’s only Lucas and the dim lights and the places where their costumes brush against each other.

‘Are you going to kiss me?’ Lucas throws into the air between them. Eliott lets it sit, watches tendrils of smoke and condensation and he leans forward. A caress of noses that creates a new crater on the surface of the moon and plasters over a skull fracture all at once.

Lucas threads his fingers through the hair at the nape of Eliott’s neck and pulls him ever closer until he can’t be sure whether their lips are touching or not. It’s the seek for warmth and an end to the teasing that finally does it, finally has Eliott closing the gap and cradling the stars stretching across Lucas’ skin in just the way he’s wanted to since he first saw them.

He tastes like the powdery sweets that still rest around his neck and a little noxious- a strange, heady mix that matches the lethal way they always look at each other, matches the way that the dried paint continues to crack as they move together.

Eliott wishes he could feel the softness of Lucas’ hair as he runs his hands through it, but it’s caked in paint too and they’re making a mess but it’s the most brilliant release after the weeks and weeks of waiting.

And, again, he thinks he’s perfect.

They fit so well together he already feels at home in the dip of Lucas’ upper lip, the gaps between his fingers and the trills of his muscles when he moves.

And even later, when they eventually break apart, all Eliott knows as he follows Lucas’ ridiculous luminous hair back into the party is that he’d marry the moon again in a heartbeat.

[todragonsart]

Siege The Valentine’s Day 10 - The bet

First things first, I AM SO SORRY for being this late :D I mean, I wanted to post this on the 10th of February, but- life and @thefishychicken​ happened in my life, so I- slipped in my timetable. I’m so sorry for being this late @dualrainbow​. 

But!

It’s better to be late then never, I think :D Thank you so much for @r6shippingdelivery​ for your help as a humble beta yet again! <3

Enjoy!!

Deep breath in- deep breath out.

IQ placed a gentle hand on his shoulder, reassuring him. "Okay, Marius, you are doing great. Let's go through the plan once more, okay?"

Deep breath in- deep breath out.

Jäger nodded, trying to concentrate on the rhythm of his breathing. "Okay-okay. So I-I look for César and when I find him, I give him back the book he lent me earlier. I start to chat with them then I ask him on a Valentine's Date!"

"Yes! Yes, perfect!" IQ started to fairy clap her hand, fully excited.

“Okay, but what do I do if he says no?” Jäger looked at her, palms ridiculously sweaty.

Immediately freezing, IQ bit into her bottom lip. “Well… I don’t think he would, you know? I think if you feel like this, it might be because he let out certain vibes as well!”

“Or that you are just a loser~” sang songed Bandit with a smirk. He didn’t even look up from his book. IQ immediately punched him in the shoulder, causing the man to wince. “Oh my god, Woman! What the fu-”

“You are no help at all! Marius is struggling here!” IQ shook her head.

With an angry grunt, Bandit sit up, placing down his book. “Listen, MamaMonika! Marius is a battle trained soldier, one of the bests of GSG9, one of the most amazing mechanics both of us knows, and his only goal is to ask his fucking crush on a date. I think he is a big boy, he can do it without you mommying him all the time!”

Hearing all this, Jäger’s lips curved upwards into a happy little smile.

IQ hummed, looking back at her teammate. “Well, you are not wrong. Marius, you can do it!”

“I don’t even understand what is your damn problem, the guy is 10 years younger and 10 cms shorter than you, you have the advantage in both!” grinned Bandit again. He picked up his book in an attempt to go back to reading, but looked up one last time. “However, I made a bet with Maxim and Jordan, so I hope you fuck it up!”

IQ planted her face into her hands, because now Jäger’s face started to turn into a grimace.

The woman stepped in front of him, placing her hands on his shoulders. “Look at me, at me! Not at him,” IQ glanced at Bandit, who was still smirking. She looked Jäger in the eyes. “Look at me, Marius. You can do it. You have been wanting him since Christmas and you made a New Year’s Vow to ask him on a date. You like him, and he likes you and even if he doesn’t like you the way you want, he is still mature enough to not poke fun at you. It’s going to be fine, and you can’t even lose anything!”

Jäger looked at her and listening he started to nod slowly. “Yeah.”

“Because you are amazing, funny, kind, smart-"

"Fucking cringy and awkward!" Bandit was a big help, yeah.

"- and fantastic! Don't listen to Dom, he is just jealous."

Bandit snorted at that, and IQ smiled at Jäger. "Are you ready?"

With a deep breath, Jäger lifted Goyo's book. "My palms are sweating, my knees are trembling, my throat is clogged-"

"Did you catch the flu?" Bandit lifted an eyebrow.

Blinking confused, Jäger shook his head. "No?"

"Then get yourself together and woman up! Be like Monika. She would stomp there, grab that guy by the ear and order him to go on a date with her!" Noticing the dark glare of IQ, Bandit smirked even wider. "In the most adorable and dominatrix way, she could!" he even winked at the woman.

Jäger let out a little laugh at the way IQ was shaking her head now. "Back to the point! You are good Marius. You can do it! Just be yourself!"

The man looked at his teammates for a few seconds, considering the options, storing the information, then, with a nod, he straightened up, hugging Goyo's book close to himself. "Very well. Wish me luck!"

"Break a leg-!"

"That way César would be able to catch you when you fall!" snorted Bandit.

Actually laughing at this, Jäger nodded and left the room. The two remaining German listened to his footsteps fade, then Bandit looked up at IQ.

"Do you really think he can do it, or you just pushing him, because you bet 25£ on him?"

IQ smiled at him. "Of course he can do it! Now come on. We need to catch our show in the Nerd Room."

Bandit placed down his book and got up, joining IQ. "Do you think Mark really put bugs everywhere on Base to be able to track the bet?"

Now IQ was the one smirking. "I helped. Trust me, there are bugs everywhere!"

Bandit hugged her close to himself for a second. "When you do stuff like this is the time I know I have the most amazing best friend!"

"And when you say stuff like this" replied IQ. "Is the time I know you are high!"

Grinning Bandit opened the door to the Monitor room - the home of Dokkaebi, Mute and all the nerds. "We will never know!"

~~~~~ ~~~~~ ~~~~~ ~~~~~

Jäger found Goyo in the common room, next to Mira, Amaru and Thermite. The later three were arguing about some sort of development for the Vulcan shield, but the Mexican wasn't really talking, just listening, as usual.

The German walked in, reassuring himself.

Breathe in- breathe out. It’s going to be okay.

When Goyo noticed Jäger, he turned his face away from the others to look at him, and offered the smallest and warmest of smiles, effectively shattering the German’s courage into tiny, knee-trembling pieces.

He felt his mouth dry out, his hands starting to shake, his previous plans vanish into thin air. It’s so not going to be okay!

For a second, he considered turning back and hiding under his bed for the next decade. That way at least he could have been safe, nobody to bug him. He could even be a ghost.

He glanced back at the door, biting into his bottom lip. Running seemed so easy and nice, for a second he even forgot why he was here.

Then he looked back at the group of people, and noticed that Goyo was still looking at him, his beautiful brown eyes waiting patiently for Jäger to join them.

The German loved his eyes. They were fantastic. The most amazing mix of red and brown, spotted with green here and there. Glaz wished to paint something this perfect! Looking into his eyes felt like walking in forest on a fresh autumn morning. There were times, when only looking at the Mexican during a training or live mission calmed him down. When he looked into Goyo's eyes, he felt appreciated and maybe even a bit special. But most of all, he felt safe.

And this on its own was worth fighting for, so he pushed aside his fears and braced himself.

With a big gulp, he clenched his fists and approached them. "Hey guys!"

As usual, Amaru greeted him in a cheerful voice. “Marius! It’s so good to see you, help us out here. Elena and Jordan are fighting over the new blueprints of the Vulcan!”

His eyes fidgeting on the book, he glanced at Goyo, then at the others and their papers. Five minutes didn’t really matter, did they? Maybe this would calm down his nerves a bit. So he joined and put the book in his pocket.

As he was hunching over the blueprints, he totally missed the little glance Goyo threw at his always cheerful partner. Amaru smirked at him.

Scratching his neck, Jäger took a pencil from the table and, literally lying on top of the big papers, he started to correct the design flaws or the constructions that were technically infeasible.

Mira and Thermite nodded along his work, offering new ideas. Amaru was kind of helping, but Goyo was only watching the scribbles of new plans, the other three, and especially Jäger. Always Jäger.

Amaru glanced at him and poked him in the side with her elbow, but Goyo gently waved her off.

When Jäger finished, he placed down the pencil and humming, looked at Mira and Thermite. “It might be easier this way!”

The Spanish tilted her head and looked at the American. “I told you he will correct most of it! You can’t actually store lava in those cans Jordan!”

“So what? A man can have dreams!”

Rolling her eyes, Mira lifted the blueprints. “Thanks Marius!”

Jäger smiled at her. “No problem. If you leave them in the workshop, we can go through them tomorrow together- I mean if you want!”

The Spaniard looked at him, lifting an eyebrow a little. Lightning fast, she glanced at Goyo then back to Jäger. “Why not now?”

Jäger - catching the little glance - felt himself blush a little. “I have stuff to do!”

“What kind of stuff?” Mira smiled. Jäger wanted to murder her. He was sure she knew about the bet. Of course she knew about the bet! In fact, Thermite was one of Bandit’s best friends, so he surely participated as well. Jäger wasn't sure about Amaru, but at this point everybody was a possible betting suspect, either ready to help or to hold him back.

With a wave of anger, he turned his face towards Goyo. "Can I steal you for five minutes?"

Blinking, the Mexican nodded. "Sure! I will be right back!" he looked at Amaru, who nodded with a smile.

As they left, Mira looked at Thermite. "I will take Eliza on a date from the money I win!"

Thermite shook his head. "It's still not over Elena. If you lose, I'm taking her on a date!"

Mira flushed all of a sudden. "You can't always steal her based on you two being best friends!"

Thermite winked at her. "You should have bet on Marius, not against him!"

The Spaniard punched him in the shoulder in anger.

Amaru smiled at them. "Oh come on kids, calm down, this is just a game!"

"Says the woman who bet 50£ to her loss?" smirked Thermite. "Why do you want to lose?"

With an all knowing smile, Amaru looked in the direction of the entrance, where Goyo and Jäger left. "Because I bet against César, and I know how happy he would be if Marius did ask him out on a date!"

Mira's eyes rounded. "He bet on Marius? That's cheating!"

Thermite shook his head. "Technically he didn't say anything yet, so… he is still in the game!"

Amaru grinned. "Yes, he is!"

~~~~~ ~~~~~ ~~~~~ ~~~~~

"You look pale, are you okay?" Goyo asked, walking side by side with Jäger.

"Y-yeah, sure! Everything is okay!" came the shaky reply. Jäger looked down at the book in his hands.

Come on!

Clenching his eyes, he recalled IQ's voice, how she tried to calm him.

Breathe in-breathe out. He can do this!

"I just brought you back the book back you lent me!" he offered said object to Goyo.

Blinking, the Mexican took it, almost not being able to hold back a smile. "I told you, you can keep it, didn't I?"

Jäger bit into his lip. Goyo did tell him, didn't he? Fuck, now he looks like an idiot! Shit.

"Y-yeah?"

Chuckling, Goyo shook his head. "You forgot?"

"Maybe."

"Well, you can still keep it. I know you love these more than me, it would be in a better place with you."

"Thank you, César!"

"Nothing to thank me for. Was this all, you wanted to talk about?"

"Yeah!" answered Jäger, then blinking he started to stutter. "I-I m-mean, n-no! No of course not I-I um...um… w-wanted to ask something, to be honest!"

"Oh, yeah? Should I be worried?" Goyo smiled at him, making Jäger's heart skip a beat.

"W-why would you do that? No! Nothing to worry about!"

"I'm just pulling your leg, Marius. You seem so stressed. Come on, let's take a walk outside, shall we?"

Jäger looked at him, nodding furiously. A little fresh air might calm down his nerves.

Heading outside, none of them were talking. And it was- perfect. They always did this, just existing side by side, and that was it. Jäger loved it, being around Goyo was putting him at ease like nothing else.

When they were out with friends and he ended up sitting next to the Mexican, he usually fell asleep on the man's shoulder. Goyo never complained. This went with movies as well, they watched together or when they were on a plane coming home after a mission. It started to become the best place for Jäger to sleep on, even though Goyo was shorter than him. He always found a way to snuggle up to the Mexican’s side.

Thankfully, the chilly February weather calmed down his burning skin a bit as they got outside. Goyo started their usual path, walking towards the hangars to check out Jäger’s helicopter.

He looked at the German, who was still deep in his thoughts, then glanced up at the Base’s windows. He didn’t even need to search for too long, he soon found a few noses pressed to the Nerd Lair’s window - Bandit, IQ, Mute, Dokkaebi, Fuze. They were watching like hungry hawks.

With a small smile, Goyo massaged the bridge of his nose and looked at Jäger. “So, how are you? You seem a bit distracted as well!”

The German glanced at him, blushing all of a sudden. “Yes! N-no-!”

Goyo lifted an eyebrow with a small smile. “Are you okay?”

“Y-yes! Yes! I’m just a bit- maybe a bit stiff? But- I need to ask you something!” Jäger stopped in his track, turning towards Goyo, placing his hands on the man’s shoulders.

Not even surprised by the sudden repositioning, the Mexican looked up at him, straight into his eyes, lips curving into a small smile. "I'm all ears."

Jäger watched his eyes for a mere second, bracing himself. It's going to be alright. Just be Monika.

He took a deep breath and opened his mouth, but the moment he wanted to speak, he noticed his friends - noses still pressed against the window.

He lifted an eyebrow, pulling a face. "Oh fuck me-"

“Maybe later-” he heard the Mexican whisper and snapped his eyes at him.

“W-what?” he stuttered. His knees started to tremble again.

Goyo - with a face calm and collected - looked up at him again, gently petting one of Jäger’s hands on his shoulder. “You wanted to ask something, right? Ask it!”

With an audible gulp Jäger nodded, letting his hands fall to his sides. “Right!” he glanced at the window once more. He saw Bandit shaking his head, and he felt his fingers clenching into fists. He took a deep breath, bracing himself for every possible answer, best and worst and nodded to himself.

“W-would you like to g-go on a date with m-me…?” he muttered, closing his eyes for a second.

Goyo just stood there, silent, unmoving.

Oh great. Now Jäger was an idiot and Bandit would win. Fantastic. Fantastic! As one more, silent second went by, his disappointment turned to sadness.

He turned his face away, rubbing his arm, trying to hide his frustration. He felt like a disaster.

Then he felt Goyo’s voice, warm and rich, making his eyes round. “I can’t give you a proper answer until you look at me, Marius.”

Fumbling with his fingers, Jäger glanced up at him just to be greeted by Goyo’s beautiful smile. He could not calm down immediately.

Goyo lifted his hand, waving Jäger closer. With never seen excitement, the German straightened up and stepped closer to the other. Goyo looked at him, his smile turning into a grin. “I thought you would never ask!”

Jäger couldn’t hold back a wide grin. He wanted to jump out of his skin in excitement, he wanted to shout, to run a mile, to do anything that would deduct his previous stress and newly found energy.

“S-so is that a yes?” he heard himself ask. Dammit anxiety! He wanted to slap himself.

With a laugh Goyo reached out and grabbed a handful of his collar, pulling him down to press their lips together. Just like that!? The motion was so smooth and calculated, Jäger could not stop his endorphin filled brain from thinking about Goyo thinking about this as well. He felt himself high, he was happy, now his hands started to shake because of this as he hugged Goyo’s waist, kissing back.

He heard the Mexican’s little laugh, as he pulled back. “Eager, aren’t we?”

Jäger bushed. “I’m sorry…?”

“Are you?” grinned Goyo.

The German shook his head. “Not a bit.”

“I know you like Valentine’s Day, but not the crowd, so February 15th? Does that work for you as the date?”

Blinking a few, Jäger burst out laughing. “Sure! Y-yes please!”

“Deal!” Goyo pressed one more kiss on his lips and stepped back. “Shall we go?”

Jäger grinned at him. “Sure- just one second!” he turned towards the window where he saw the others and flipped them a finger, then turned to Goyo. “They made a stupid bet-”

“I know!” nodded Goyo. Wide eyes, Jäger looked at him to be greeted by a small smirk. “I bet on you asking me, and you did it!”

“H-hey!” Jäger almost fainted and when the Mexican started his way back to the building he ran after him, totally missing the celebration in the Computer room.

~~~~~ ~~~~~ ~~~~~ ~~~~~

“I won!” IQ popped down next to Bandit, who was still sitting next to the window. “And you lost!”

Bandit looked at her, his lips pulling into a sly smirk as he reached for his smoke.

IQ crossed her arms in front of her. “Why are you smiling? You lost…!”

He pulled out one thread and put it in between his lips. He lit it and blew out the smoke. “Did I?” Bandit patted her knee. “I lost, like- 10£.”

Her eyes widening, IQ leant closer. “How!?”

Bandit looked at her. “I never said I bet against Marius, Monika.”

“But you said-”

“I know what I said, but that only was to get Marius going!”

Mouth falling open the woman shook her head, a smile bloomin on her lips. “You fucker. You made like… 20 bets with everybody and none of these were against Marius, hah?”

Bandit nodded. “I’m rich.”

“You fucking fucker. But how did you lose that 10£ then?” IQ tilted her head.

Bandit looked out the window, satisfied. “The only bet I made against Marius was- with Marius.”

IQ both amazed and scared shook her head. “You- I can’t even-”

Bandit looked up at her. “I knew he could do it, Monika, but not using this opportunity to collect money is just stupid!” he winked.

“Evil.”

“Genius.”

“I can’t even!” IQ shook her head and still trying to process all the info, she stood up and left Bandit by himself.

Grinning the German looked after her and out of the window. He could still see Jäger and Goyo, and he just couldn’t stop the proud smile spreading on his lips.

I hope you enjoyed! <3

[kaluawoo]

GX Headcanons

Very much Not Sorted because what is organizing but oh well. Doubly unsorted bc I decided to start typing up the ones I already had and add on if I found new ones.

Me:”Yeah I only have five HCs or so.” Also me: *Ends up with this long list* “Where do all these come from?”

(Anyway I’m putting them under a cut bc. Length. And I guess it’s because one HC tends to lead me to another ashdjkhlkhjk)

@lecliss You said you wanted to see them? They ended up a bit rambly sorry

Johan’s family is from Northern Germany and Denmark, and sometimes even he and his parents aren’t quite sure which family members come from where

He grew up in Germany, but went to a Danish Kindergarten and a Danish elementary school* but afterwards went to a normal German high school (Gymnasium**, to be exact) until he switched to a duelling school

Johan is really good with languages, and the most fluent in Japanese out of the Exchange Squad. He also started learning it the earliest of them, mainly via Volkshochschule***

Speaking of Japanese proficiency: When they all arrive, Jim is the one who knows the least Japanese, though he quickly improves

Other way round, among Judai’s group, Kenzan is the one who’s the best in English

Judai isn’t that good in English, but that doesn’t stop him from using whatever English he knows to talk to the Exchange Squad. With charades and quickly scribbled pictures if need be. As a former exchange student I say from the bottom of my heart that the world needs more Judais

Sho is actually really good, but he’s too insecure to try talking English with the Exchange Squad, and is relieved that they’re all pretty fluent in Japanese

Jun thinks he’s awesome in English regardless of his actual skill. He fairly often confuses everyone else because “No this is not a word”. (Yet. They all end up adopting quite a few of the words Jun made up/is convinced are real English words, so at some point, they are words. To this group, at least.) Again speaking as a former exchange student, the world also needs more Juns

People are sometimes convinced the Exchange Squad has a secret language but they don’t. Theoretically they speak English to each other, but every now and then they throw in Japanese words because they remembered that one first, Johan sometimes talks to O’Brien in Portuguese, meanwhile O’Brien tries to teach Jim Portuguese, Jim knows like 10 German words he likes saying to Johan, Johan once tried mimicking Karen’s crocodile noises to talk to her, Jim got taught how to count to 5 in Thai by an exchange student who came to his school in Australia and now tries to teach the others how to do it, too... Etc

Meanwhile, Amon has been taught some phrases in many different languages, and uses those occasionally. Sometimes in a language one of the others speaks, sometimes in one he thought nobody knew. And at least once Johan surprised the heck out of him when he answered in the same language. Also, he can tell that everyone is pronouncing the Thai words really wrong, but decides to let them have their fun.

O’Brien is from Brazil I don’t remember if there’s canon info so I’ll add it here lol

The Exchange Squad is Shocked(TM) when Jim tells them he’s never watched Crocodile Dundee. A movie night commences, obviously including Judai’s group.

Jim is kinda neutral about the movie but he does lowkey wanna quote the “That’s not a knife - This is a knife!” scene (He’d be willing to substitute a different noun if the situation arises. Part of him hopes he can even go “That’s not a reptile, this is a reptile!” and show Karen but like, the chance for that is low. Also, mood)

Ra Yellow’s Dorm Teacher is the Home Economics teacher (I’m assuming that since they have PE, physics and alchemy they have more classes than just duelling lmao)

Daichi used to think he was bad at maths when he was a kid because he had a shitty teacher who got mad at him if/when he found other/easier ways of doing stuff :( (Which doubly sucked because Daichi really enjoyed math, especially finding other solutions, just to be told he was wrong)

However he did at some point get a better teacher and absolutely thrived in math class after that

He sometimes forgets that most people, especially his age, really don’t like maths. He at least once invited Judai to do Math together or help Judai with his math homework and was lowkey hurt when Judai declined, before Daichi remembered that, right, he probably just dislikes math.

Of course Judai noticed that Daichi was missing for a long time in the Society of Light arc, he just played it down so he wouldn’t worry Sho and Kenzan. And it’s part of the reason he was so hell-bent on getting Johan back, because he felt as if this was the second time he was at fault for a friend getting hurt!

Idk what gender Martin is but he’s not a cis dude.

Post-canon, Jim does a gap year to volunteer at a wildlife preserve in Australia

Fujiwara uses they/them pronouns

Fubuki had a crush on Fujiwara at some point

O’Brien gets nervous in cars and prefers pretty much any other method of transport (even busses, though if he has a choice, he’ll pick trains etc over busses, too). He does have a driver’s license though.

Judai’s Winged Kuriboh and Yugi’s Kuriboh are brothers (Idk if spirits can actually have family but let’s assume they do)

* Close to the Danish border, there’s schools and kindergartens called “Danish School/Kindergarten”, where the lessons are taught in Danish etc. Different ones have different rules which kids can enroll there, e.g. some only accept kids with at least one Danish parent, others accept everyone, but afaik all or at least most have all the lessons etc in Danish, and after a few years the parent-teacher-conferences are also in Danish, so non-Danish parents are expected to learn Danish if they want their kid there.

** German school system is confusing af; elementary school is until grade 4, then grade 5+ are high school (or secondary school I guess). There’s multiple types of high school, Gymnasium

*** One dictionary says it’s community college in English, but the English wikipedia page calls it Folk High School... Either way, it’s technically aimed at adults, you can take specific classes including languages, and I know at least one teen who took Japanese in one.